Motorola Company has recently announced that is will launch Motorola Milestone in Spain at the end of March this year.

The announcement was made by the company in the Mobile World Congress in Spain. Moreover, the device will be available SIM-free starting from the end of March 2010, which means that they still have to look for a carrier partner.

In the meantime, no further information was provided by the company about the cost of the new device.

Spanish oil company Repsol YPE SA has announced that it will hold a board meeting on January 15 to vote to confirm its confidence in Chairman Antonio Brufau.

While filling to the Spanish market regulator, the company has revealed that it will vote on the degree of success if it’s strategic plan.

Earlier this week, some of the Spanish news channels reported that the company’s leading shareholder, Sacyr-Vallehermoso SA, has in past weeks been looking for a replacement for Brufau.

Highly indebted Sacyr in current months has been at odds with Brufau over the allocation of funds.

Clearwire Corp. introduced its commercial WiMAX services in Malaga, Spain. The wireless services are provided under the brand name 'Instanet' and are the first 4G service by the operator in Europe.

According to Clearwire, instanet service is capable of providing downloading speeds of 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps depending upon the plan. The subscribers can access Clearwire's WiMax service in Malaga with or without a service contract.

AOL Inc., a New York based company and the internet company spun off from Time Warner Inc. in December, announced that it has launched a involuntary job reduction today after 1,100 workers accepted buyout packages as part of a $200 million restructuring.

Moreover, the company also plans to close its offices in Spain as well as Sweden, said Tricia Primrose, an official. Further, she said many of the affected United States workers will leave the company on January 13th.

Zurich Financial Services, on Tuesday, said that it has being transferring bulk of its general insurance portfolios in Italy, Spain and Portugal to its Ireland unit in order to rationalize its European Union business. The transfer will help in simplifying the legal structure of the company as well as in improving the capital management.

In a statement, the Swiss-based Corporation said that the carry-over of the insurance portfolios is effective as on January 1.

The Panama Canal Authority has recently announced that it has awarded a $268 million excavation agreement to a consortium including Mexico’s ICA, Spain’s FCC and Costa Rica’s Meco.

While releasing a statement, the authority said that the companies will help dig a channel linking Panama’s new Pacific locks with the narrowest part of the canal.

In a process to make way for bigger ships, Panama has decided to invest $5.25 billion during the first major expansion of the canal since it was opened in 1914.

Emirates Airline will start its non-stop direct flights from Dubai and Madrid from August 1 to create the first air services between United Arab Emirates and the popular southern European country.

With this, Emirates Airlines will fill the gap in its European network and underlines growing trade and traffic between the both nations. It will be the fourth new route for Emirates in 2010, after Tokyo, Amsterdam and Prague.

Eroski Sociedad Cooperativa, a Spanish supermarket owner and operator, has recently inked a sale-leaseback agreement on a 13-property portfolio. The New York based W. P Carey & Co LLC through CPA®:17-Global, a publicly held, non-traded REIT has paid $51 million for the portfolio.

While talking to reporters, executive director of W. P. Carey, Jeffrey Lefleur said, “The Eroski acquisition represents an opportunity to enter the Spanish market by investing in well-located retail locations leased to an established brand name retailer.”

Spain’s Gas Natural Company has recently announced that it has increased a cap for issuing euro medium term notes (EMTNs) to 10 billion euros ($14.57 billion) as against 8 billion euros earlier.

According to the statement issued by the company, the agreement was managed by La Caixa, Barclays Capital, Credit Agricole, ING, RBS, Societe Generale, BNP Paribas, Caja Madrid, Citi, J. P. Morgan, Santander and UBS.

The company has already issued EMTNs worth 5.275 billion euros in 2009 and now it has the option of issuing another 4.725 billion.

Amcor Ltd has bagged European Commission nod to proceed with the acquirement of the European businesses of Alcan Packaging that Amcor is buying from Rio Tinto Plc.

Talking to reporters, the managing director and chief executive of Amcor, Ken MacKenzie said, “Receiving approval from the European Commission is an important step toward closing the Alcan Packaging acquisition.”

In return, the company has decided to divest two facilities with joint sales of about 110 million euros generating a range of pharmaceutical, personal care and food packaging products.