A round-up of other business news in brief

ESB one of three final bidders for managing Nigeria's national grid

“I can tell you that we expect to finalise everything and hand over by the end of the year,” said Bart Nnaji, head of a presidential taskforce charged with reforming Nigeria’s power sector.

President Goodluck Jonathan this week unveiled a blueprint for ending chronic power shortages in sub-Saharan Africa’s second biggest economy, a plan which financiers say could unlock billions of dollars of private sector investment.

The ESB has been selected as one of the last three bidders to take over the management of Nigeria’s national grid, a contract likely to be awarded by the end of the year, a top official said yesterday. The other shortlisted bidders to manage the transmission grid in Africa’s most populous nation are Manitoba Hydro, owned by the Canadian province of Manitoba, and India’s Power Grid Corp.

New Boeing arrival deferred yet again

Boeing has pushed back delivery of its first 787 Dreamliner by several weeks – a widely expected decision but also the latest in a series of embarrassing glitches that have disrupted production of the hotly anticipated aircraft.

The sixth postponement of the carbon-composite airplane is attributed to a delay in the availability of a Rolls-Royce engine needed for the final phases of flight testing.

The US planemaker now expects to deliver the first carbon-composite plane to Japan's All Nippon Airways Co Ltd by the middle of the first quarter of 2011.

Boeing has taken 847 orders for the Dreamliner, which lists for $150 million to $205.5 million. – (Reuters)

Intel in warning over revenue   

Intel warned third-quarter revenue could fall short of its own estimates by more than $1 billion (€785 million), reinforcing doubts about the strength of a technology sector recovery.

But shares in the industry bellwether, which dominates the market for PC microprocessors, gained a little because investors had braced for bad news and were relieved the downward revision had not been worse.

Intel expects third-quarter revenue to be between $10.8 billion and $11.2 billion, down from a previous forecast of $11.2 billion to $12.0 billion, and from analysts' average expectation of $11.5 billion.

Intel now sees gross margins in the period of 65 to 67 per cent. – (Reuters)