American Airlines to slash 13,000 jobs

NEW YORK: American Airlines plans to slash 13,000 jobs around 15 per cent of the company's total workforce and cut costs by 20 per cent in order to stay afloat after filing for bankruptcy late last year. Local television in the Dallas-Forth Worth, Texas area, home base of AMR, said the cuts include 1,400 management and support staff, 400 pilots, 2,300 flight attendants, 4,600 maintenance workers and 4,200 fleet service employees.

Crisis, earthquakes hurt Munich Re

FRANKFURT: Munich Re, the world's biggest reinsurer, said yesterday that profits plummeted last year due to heavy losses from both the eurozone debt crisis and a string of natural catastrophes. Munich Re said in a statement it booked bottom-line net profit of €710 billion (US$935 million) in 2011, a drop of 71 per cent from a year earlier. "We have never experienced a year like 2011 before extreme burdens from natural catastrophes combined with the financial crisis, which flared up again after the slight recovery in 2009 and 2010," said chief financial officer Joerg Schneider.

EU mulls lighter lending rules for banks

PARIS: The European Union is mulling lighter rules on banking reserves in a development that could see regulators stand accused of buckling to industry pressure, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The newspaper quotes sources sources close to negotiations as saying that European regulators might accept a broader range of assets among reserves that banks are required to maintain to protect themselves in crises. Beyond cash deposits and high-quality government bonds, a source said assets like gold, blue-chip stocks and mortgage-backed securities might qualify if the changes are accepted.

Aussie iron lady on road to world's wealthy

SYDNEY: Australian Gina Rinehart could soon become the world's wealthiest woman after amassing an US$18 billion fortune from mining and media investments, Forbes magazine says in its latest list of the wealthiest people in Australia. The 57-year old widow saw her fortune almost double after a deal signed last month that will see South Korean steel giant POSCO take a 15 per cent stake in her Roy Hill iron ore mine in Western Australia's Pilbara iron belt. The deal valued the project at US$10 billion, boosting Rinehart's fortune dramatically. If commodity prices hold up, Rinehart could challenge Christie Walton, worth US$24.5 billion, as the world's richest woman, Forbes said. Agencies