The Ministry of Electricity and Water in Kuwait recently selected General Electric Co. (GE) for building a 2,000 megawatt power plant. The company had submitted a bid for 770 million dinars ($2.7 billion) for the Subbiya plant.

In April, Kuwait floated a new tender for building turbines for a plant in the north of the country. At that time, the Ministry had expected costs for bringing the plant into effect by 2011 to be far less than 700 million dinars. Kuwait has one of the world’s highest per capita power consumption rates.

Apart from GE, other companies that initially qualified for the project included Germany's Siemens (SI), Japan's Mitsui & Co. (MITSY) and Marubeni Corp., Spain's Iberdrola Ingenieria Y Construccion and Canada's SNC-Lavalin Ltd.

General Electric has products and services ranging from aircraft engines, power generation, water processing and security technology to medical imaging, business and consumer financing, media

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Banque Attijari de Tunisie, or the Attijari Bank, the Tunisian branch of Morocco’s Attijariwafa Bank (NYSE:ATW)–Morocco’s leading banking and financial services group and the seventh-largest bank in Africa in terms of total assets–surpassed the Banque Internationale Arabe de Tunisie in 2008 to become the country’s second most profitable bank behind Bank of Tunisia. Among other impressive figures, Attijari saw growth in interest margin (+30.6%), the margin on commissions (+11.9%) and income on its securities portfolio (+20.4%). Additionally, the institution’s turnover reached 220.30 million dinars, a 21.7% increase, while gross operating income was up 44.5% to 60 million dinars. Deposits, meanwhile, increased by 24.1% to a rate greater than loans disbursed (1.96 billion dinars, 15.2%). And the total balance sheet of the bank increased by 19.9% to 2.83 billion dinars. Moncef Chaffar, Chairman of the

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HP Beats 4Q Forecasts; Carrefour Milks New CEO From Nestle; InBev Officially Closes Anheuser Buy; Home Depot Beats 3Q Estimate; Gulf Bank Loses $1.4 Billion; Mexican Tycoon Interested in Circuit City; Wholesale Prices Plummet

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ), the world’s largest maker of personal computers, offered a preview of its fiscal fourth-quarter profits – reporting that it will beat market expectations and raise its fiscal 2009 outlook. “HP is gaining market share in an extremely strong competitive position. They’ve got share gains, combined with very aggressive cost reduction,” Shannon Cross of Cross Research told Reuters. Lars Olofsson, Executive Vice President of Nestle SA, has been named Chief Executive Officer of Carrefour S.A., the world’s second-largest retailer. He’ll ...