July 16 - 22, 2001

Slot exchange agreement in the Far East Middle East Trade

P&O Nedlloyd Container Line, NYK Line and Hyundai Merchant Marine are, from this month, entering into a slot exchange agreement with some of their respective services in the Far East Middle East Trade.

The co-operation will allow the Lines to optimise port calls in China and the Middle East, and add a Kwangyang call in Korea. The new product provides the market with 'best of class' services from China and Korea to the Middle East.

BMI British Midland and United Airlines

BMI British Midland announced it is to seek anti-trust immunity with United Airlines, as well as a full open skies agreement, in advance of UK-US government talks next week on deregulation of the transatlantic air travel market.

The airline also confirmed, for the first time, the routes it plans to serve when deregulation allows. BMI British Midland will launch services from Heathrow to its existing US gateways, Washington and Chicago, as well as Miami, Denver and Seattle.

BMI British Midland and United Airlines are to press British and American transport authorities to introduce full open skies for both passenger and cargo traffic across the Atlantic immediately. With anti-trust immunity in place, they will offer true competition on a full range of UK-US routes.

TCS & Al-Meezan Bank sign agreement

TCS & Al-Meezan Investment Bank (AMIB) have entered into an arrangement whereby TCS would assist AMIB by providing them with its distribution network for the sale of AMIB's Riba-Free — Certificates of Islamic Investment.

An agreement in this regard was signed by TCS Chairman, Khalid N. Awan and Irfan Siddiqui, CEO, Al-Meezan Investment Bank Limited recently.

Speaking on the occasion Khalid N. Awan said, "We attach long-term importance to this alliance. We'll give our best in service and keep evaluating our performance in order to expand our relationship."

Irfan Siddiqui said, "I am very excited at the alliance which has allowed value-addition at both ends. Both the companies have tremendous opportunity to promote Riba Free in the country."

TCS would be placing the applications for these certificates at its Booking offices where AMIB clients would be entertained — this would involve answering Customer queries, providing the applications to interested customers, accepting filled applications along with cheques, forwarding the applications to AMIB & delivering the investment advice to the customer.

Initially this facility would be available in 4 cities — Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Faisalabad & Hyderabad. The arrangement would later be extended to other cities.

This initiative of TCS of being one of the first non-bank companies to facilitate the distribution of financial products is another effort by it to provide more value added services to its customers and promote the concept of Islamic financial investment products.

First Women Bank Limited

Ms. Zarine Aziz President First Women Bank Ltd., had a meeting with the women entrepreneurs at Head Office Karachi and discussed the restructuring plan of the Bank which is in process. Ms. Aziz briefed participants about plan of the Bank and reposed confidence on the women entrepreneur that they will join hand with the Bank for economic upliftment of the women.

First Women Bank Ltd., is planning to enable this institution to meet its stated objectives: a competitive and market oriented bank, with the social objective of economic empowerment of women.

Women Entrepreneur belonging to large medium and small borrowers appreciated this exercise of the Bank and gave their views and recommendations for the restructuring process.

It's a different kind of world you need a different kind of software

Karachi: IBM organised a seminar in Karachi on its Software Products and Strategies. Objective of the seminar was to highlight the functions and benefits of the IBM Software products, especially in the changing e-economy. Products covered were WebSphere, Lotus Family, industry leading IBM DB2 Relational Database and Network Management Software — Tivoli. It was emphasised how IBM Software provide a common platform for both the Business Unit and IT Manager in achieving the organisations business goals.

Mr. Jean-Christophe Knoertzer - Area Manager for IBM Software Group and Mr. Bashar Kilani - Regional Manager Integration Software, specially flew in to make the presentations at the seminar.

The seminar was largely attended by Business & IT Executives from leading organisations from Multinationl, Private and Government sectors.