Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/905944
maltatoday WEDNESDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2017 11 Business Today www.creditinfo.com.mt info@creditinfo.com.mt Tel: 2131 2344 Your Local Partner for Credit Risk Management Solutions Supporting you all the way EasyJet profi ts sink despite record passenger numbers Pre-tax profits at easyJet slumped 24 percent to €435m last year, despite a record 80.2 million travellers choosing to fly with the budget airline. The industry is in the middle of a price war thanks to a glut of available seats, while easyJet said it was also impacted by currency headwinds of €114m and higher staff costs. Outgoing chief executive Carolyn McCall said: "EasyJet's model is resilient and sustainable and we now have a huge amount of positive momentum which will enable the airline to continue to grow profitably." Revenues in the year to September 30 climbed 8.1% to around €5.65bn, despite a fall in revenue per seat of 0.4pc to €65.69. EasyJet said earnings had continued to climb in the first quarter of this year, "primarily as a result of some capacity leaving the market". Its rival Monarch collapsed last month, while Alitalia and Air Berlin went into administration earlier in the year. In October easyJet agreed a deal to acquire part of Air Berlin's operations at Tegel airport for €40bn and it is also bidding for some of Alitalia's business. McCall will leave the airline next week and will be replaced by Tui boss Johan Lundgren on December 1. Pre-tax profi ts at easyJet dipped 24 percent last year FIMBank announces new interest rates for Easisave Accounts FIMBank plc has announced new interest rates for accounts linked to its online savings portal Easisave.com. Online Savings Accounts will now carry a 0.5% p.a. interest rate, while its Three-Month Fixed Term Deposits will earn de- positors 1.0% p.a. The new interest rates will be applicable until the 31st December 2017. Commenting on the new interest rates, Chris Trapani, Head of Cash Management at FIMBank plc, said that the new rates "are a way for the Bank to thank its loyal customers for their contribution in turning Easisave.com into the resilient and popular brand it is today. The user-friendly and secure features of www.easisave.com make it a preferred option for depositors wishing to manage their funds online." Trapani added that FIMBank has also taken the opportunity to give a facelift to the Easisave.com portal, "rendering it even easier and more convenient to use." For further information, please visit www.easisave. com or call the Easisave Helpdesk on 21322102. Girls better than boys at working together to solve problems Girls are much better than boys at working together to solve problems, according to the OECD. Some 125,000 15-year-olds in 52 countries and economies took part in the test, which analyses for the first time how well students work together as a group, their attitudes towards collaboration and the influence of factors such as gender, after- school activities and social background. "In a world that places a growing premium on social skills, education systems need to do much better at fostering those skills systematically across the school curriculum," said Angel Gurría, the Secretary-General of OECD. "Parents and society at large must play their part too. It takes collaboration across a community to develop better skills for better lives." Students who have stronger reading or maths skills tend to be better at collaborative problem- solving because managing and interpreting information, and the ability to reason, are required to solve problems. The same is true across countries: top- performing countries in PISA, like Japan, Korea and Singapore in Asia, Estonia and Finland in Europe, and Canada in North America, also come out top in the collaborative problem- solving test. However, students in Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and the US perform better in collaborative problem solving than would be expected based on their scores in science, reading and mathematics. But students in the four Chinese provinces that took part in PISA (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Guangdong) do less well compared to their results in mathematics and science.