Category: Industry
Port Fire
May 24, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka Ports Authority said a fire that broke out in a container freight station at Colombo Port has been brought under control and authorities are assessing the damage and probing its cause.Fire brigades of Sri Lanka Ports Authority, Sri Lanka Army, Navy, Air Force, Colombo Dockyard and Colombo Municipal […]
Emirates ups flights to Sri Lanka
May 24, 2013 (LBO) – Dubai-based Emirates Airlines said it is increasing frequencies to Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo by three a week to 31, to cope with rising demand. “The demand for seats on the Colombo Dubai sector is increasing, and these additional flights will enable more UK and USA bound passengers to connect with […]
Crude Plan
May 23, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka will re-start its 50,000 barrels per day refinery on May 24, after getting a stock of Omani light crude, petroleum minister Anura Yapa said. Yapa said the shipper had said they were having engine troubled and could not deliver the stock in time. The refinery hit by US […]
Data Protection
SAN FRANCISCO, May 22, 2013 (AFP) – Twitter said Wednesday it was stepping up security measures for the popular messaging service following a series of high-profile breaches by hackers hitting media organizations and others.Earlier this month, the Twitter feed of satirical US news website The Onion was also taken over by the Syrian group aiming […]
Auto Woes
May 23, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Diesel and Motor Engineering Company Plc, has reported losses of 36 million rupees in the March 2013 quarter down from profits of 427 million rupees, following a tax hike which hit the auto market. Taxes on cars were raised despite warnings from the both the International Monetary Fund […]
Psychographics
May 22, 2013 (LBO) – Web searching in Sri Lanka for consumer products have rocketed with rapidly falling device and access prices, giving opportunities for radically different ways of doing business, a Google official said.“The search trends for all categories in Sri Lanka have increased anywhere between 12 to 25 times, be it automobile category […]
Super Fast
May 22, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka Telecom the only wireline operator in the country, said it had soft-launched a VDSL2 (Very-High-Bit-Rate Digital Subscriber Line 2) fixed broadband service.The technology was demonstrated to Sri Lanka’s telecom minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya, at a regional telecom office in Kegalle. The demonstration has seen data speeds in excess of […]
New Chief
May 22, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka based MillenniumIT a unit of London Stock Exchange has appointed John Mackay Gill, ex-senior vice president of SunGard Data System Inc of the US as its chief executive. “Mack has had an exceptional career at SunGard and has a wealth of experience in financial services technology, operations, product […]
Finance Rating
May 22, 2013 (LBO) – Melsta Regal Finance Ltd, a unit of Distilleries Company of Sri Lanka has been rated ‘A+(lka) by Fitch Ratings, on the strength of its ‘AAA(lka)’ rated ultimate parent. The full statement is reproduced below: Fitch Rates Sri Lanka’s Melsta Regal Finance ‘A+(lka)’/Stable Fitch Ratings-Colombo-21 May 2013: Fitch Ratings has assigned […]
Stable Rating
May 21, 2013 (LBO) – Fitch Ratings said an ‘AA-(lka)’ rating of Sri Lanka’s Hatton National Bank has been confirmed with a stable outlook and the bank has slowed pawning advances as gold prices fell. It also confirmed an ‘A+(lka)’ rating of HNB’s subordinated debentures of 6.0 billion rupees. “HNB’s ratings reflect its strong domestic […]
Sri Lanka unit of Allianz says profits, written premium up
May 20, 2013 (LBO) – Allianz Lanka, a unit of Germany’s Allianz insurance group said pre-tax profits rose 5.0 percent to 85 million rupees in the March 2013 quarter from a year earlier and written premium also grew helped by fire business. Its conglomerate solvency ratio had declined to 183 percent from 197 due to […]
Micro Expansion
May 20, 2013 (LBO) – Prime Grameen Micro Finance Limited plans to grow its customers from 125,000 members to 200,000 members in 2013, helped by expansions into former war zones in Sri Lanka’s East, officials said.Before borrowing, members of a group will typically start depositing small amounts, helping develop a savings habit. Some micro finance […]