World financial news

The federal government is moving ahead with the first auction of offshore petroleum leases in the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon disaster _ despite a lawsuit challenging the sale.

Interior Department spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz said bids will be opened as scheduled on Wednesday in New Orleans.

Four environmental groups are challenging a study used to clear the sale _ but aren’t seeking a federal court order to stop the auction. Instead, an attorney said a judge might decide later to throw out the results if he agrees with the suit.

The sale covers the western Gulf off the coast of Texas. Officials said the auction has attracted 241 bids from 20 companies on 191 tracts.

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Boeing is starting to fly right.

An Indonesian airline’s commitment to buy $21.7 billion worth of new planes is the latest good news for the company after a year when some things could have gone better.

Earlier this week, Emirates Airlines ordered $18 billion worth of 777s. Both deals come shortly after Boeing finally began delivering its two newest planes, the next-generation 787 and the latest version of the iconic 747.

Just a year ago, the outlook was dicier.

The new 787 was already running nearly three years late when an electrical fire on a test plane in November 2010 forced it to suspend flight tests. The revamped 747 was running late, too. And Airbus announced plans to put a new engine on its A320, making the plane more fuel efficient and a more potent competitor to Boeing’s 737.

The Airbus move forced Boeing to switch gears and offer a new-engine version of its 737 rather than build an all-new plane as it had originally expected to do.

Boeing needed some successes, and it found them in Asia and the Middle East, where rising wealth is turning more people into travelers.

Boeing expects demand for 11,450 planes in the Asia-Pacific region over the next 20 years, more than in any other part of the world. That number includes planes made by Boeing and competitors such as Airbus and new entrants into the market. Airbus has already booked 1,268 firm orders for its A320neo, so named for its “new engine option.”

The commitment by Indonesia’s Lion Air announced on Thursday is for 230 Boeing 737s. Lion Air also has options for 150 more planes, valued at $14 billion, bringing the deal’s total potential value to $35 billion.

The order would be Boeing’s largest ever in terms of both volume and dollars.

“This order is a big deal,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Robert Stallard wrote in a research note to clients. The deal “gives a meaningful boost to Boeing’s backlog.”

Most of the planes are the 737 Max, a new version of Boeing’s most popular plane with more fuel-efficient engines. It won’t be delivered to its first customer until 2017. Boeing has said it has about 600 commitments for the 737 Max.

But the Lion Air deal is not a certainty. The airline still has to finalize the order, and it’s struggling no teletrek payday advance. The Jakarta Post reported in August that Lion Air was ordered to ground 13 planes so it would have more in reserve because it had too many late flights.

“There’s always a risk that a deal’s going to fall through,” Citi analyst Jason Gursky said. “It’s a brutal industry, and when we go through periods of slower economic growth, there will be failures. It’s Boeing’s job to pick the winners and losers. But I think they’re pretty agnostic right now as to who they sell to.”

Gursky said Boeing went on “order holiday” in 2011 because it didn’t have a product to sell. That has changed now that it decided to put a new engine on the 737. He expects Boeing’s deliveries to increase by 27 percent next year, compared with a 9 percent increase at Airbus.

“That’s why we think this year is going to be the year of Boeing,” he said.

Even before Lion Air announced its plans, Boeing has been ramping up production to try to meet demand for the 737 as well as the 777, a larger plane used mostly on international routes. It already has a backlog of 2,191 737s that have been ordered by airlines around the world but not yet built.

Boeing already completes about one 737 every day in Renton, Wash. It is raising that to 42 per month in 2014. It has not yet said whether the 737 Max will be assembled in Renton or somewhere else, perhaps in South Carolina, where it is opening a second assembly line for its new 787.

Boeing already employs some 80,000 people in Washington state. Gursky, the analyst, has written that the biggest risk to Boeing’s planned rate increases appears to be its ability to hire the thousands of new workers it will need.

Lion Air already has orders for 125 more Boeing 737-900ERs. Its fleet currently stands at 73 planes, according to Airfleets.net. Sixty-five of those are Boeing 737s.

Also Thursday, Boeing said that aircraft leasing company Aviation Capital Group had ordered 20 of its 737-800s and committed to buy 35 of the planned 737 Max.

Shares of Chicago-based Boeing fell 25 cents Thursday to close at $66.09.

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Wells Fargo 6,126

Edward Jones 4,965

Citigroup 3,800

U.S. Bancorp 3,750

Bank of America 2,815

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The influential Russia finance minister who was just ousted by President Dmitry Medvedev is warning that Russia’s budget is overextended.

Alexei Kudrin was forced out Monday after a public spat with Medvedev.

In a statement, Kudrin says over the past several months despite his numerous objections “decisions were taken on budget policies that without doubt have increased budget risks.”

He said those included “excessive commitments in the defense sector and social sector that will inevitably affect the entire national economy.”

Kudrin said wanted to resign in February but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin asked him to stay on. Putin on Tuesday appointed one of Kudrin’s deputies, Anton Siluanov, to serve as acting finance minister.

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For 35 years, Toronto singer-songwriter Dan Hill tolerated that other people owned the master recordings and song copyrights for many of his greatest hits.

Now he can claim them back.

Under an obscure clause in U.S. copyright law, he has a shot at regaining ownership from record labels and publishing companies

WASHINGTON

Missouri’s fledgling solar power industry could be severely wounded by a recent court decision declaring that mandated rebates on solar installations violate the state constitution.

The $2-a-watt rebate, approved by Missouri voters in 2008, shaves thousands of dollars off the cost of solar energy systems

Why isn

Asian stock markets faltered Thursday after a Federal Reserve report confirmed a slowdown in U.S. economic growth.

Oil prices jumped to above $101 per barrel after OPEC unexpectedly left its production levels unchanged. In currencies, the dollar strengthened against the yen but slipped against the euro.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index slipped 0.3 percent to 9,421.59. South Korea’s Kospi was down 0.2 percent to 2,078.64 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 0.6 percent to 22,515.49.

Shares of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the embattled Japanese utility known as TEPCO, plummeted 20 percent to an all-time low, a day after a government-appointed panel launched an investigation into a nuclear accident that took place at one of the company’s plants following a devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

TEPCO has been struggling to get control of the plant since the quake and critics say the company was woefully unprepared for such a disaster.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.2 percent to 4,546.20, as banking and energy blue chips gained. BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s largest miner, was 0.3 percent higher, while Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the country’s largest bank by market capitalization, added 0.4 percent.

Airline shares stalled as higher fuel costs threatened to cut into profits.

Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd. fell 1.8 percent, and China’s three major state-owned airlines _ China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines and Air China _ tumbled more than 3 percent each in Hong Kong.

On Wall Street, more lackluster economic news sent stocks down Wednesday. A Federal Reserve report showed the economy slowed in several regions for the first time this year, largely due to the effect of higher oil prices.

The report added to concerns that have been building since mid-April that the American economy is stalling. High oil prices, bad weather and production disruptions following the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan have combined to dampen many investors’ outlook for the rest of the year.

On Tuesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that the U.S. economic recovery was “uneven” and “frustratingly slow,” though he added that he expected growth to pick up in the second half of the year.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 lost 0.4 percent, its sixth straight loss. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.2 percent to 12,048.94. The Nasdaq composite slipped 1 percent to 2,675.38.

Benchmark oil for July delivery was up 69 cents to $101.43 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract gained $1.65 to settle at $100.74 on Wednesday.

The dollar strengthened to 80.15 yen from 79.94 yen late Wednesday in New York. The euro was up to $1.4623 from $1.4581.

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