The Bank of England reduced its benchmark interest rate for the first time in two years, saying inflation is likely to slow as higher credit costs hurt economic growth. The nine-member Monetary Policy Committee reduced the rate by a quarter-point to 5.5 percent. This is the first decline since August 2005, but despite the cut,

Finance Minister Michalis Sarris has forecast that Cyprus will record budget surpluses of 0.5% in the next three years, perhaps even four, insisting that the surplus for 2007 will reach 1.5% of GDP. Sarris is so confident of the improvement in state affairs that he pledged that “the CYP 74 mln package of social aid

Nokia announced that it has now completed its acquisition of Avvenu www.avvenu.com, initially announced on December 4. Avvenu is a company providing secure remote access and private sharing technology that allows users to access and view PC files remotely, even when their PC is off. By acquiring Avvenu, Nokia plans to further enhance its portfolio

Motorola, Inc. announced an agreement with long-standing customer Mobilink (an Orascom Telecom company) to deploy a WiMAX 802.16e-2005 access network for the operator in Pakistan. Under the terms of the agreement, Motorola will design, plan, deploy and optimize a WiMAX network for Mobilink, deliver integration and support services as well as indoor and outdoor customer

Microsoft Gulf has announced that it has recently conducted an anti-piracy raid on an IT reseller in Dubai. The raid followed complaints about the IT reseller by Microsoft Gulf for loading unlicensed versions of Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows XP on computers sold to customers. “This was an extremely crucial raid, as the IT reseller

Ericsson has been selected by leading operator 3 to develop and host its award-winning mobile music service, 3Music, in Sweden and Denmark. Under the agreement Ericsson will have end-to-end responsibility for 3’s world-leading music service, including systems integration, operations and development of new features. The service will give more than 885,000 Danish and Swedish customers

The overall performance of UK credit cards was steady in September, helped by the benign economic environment, Moody’s Investors Service said in its UK Credit Cards index. Delinquencies improved during September, with the delinquency rate easing to 6.03% from 6.16% the previous month. “We believe that this improvement was driven by a concerted effort by