LONDON: The Nasdaq Stock Market is abandoning its 31 percent stake in the London Stock Exchange five months after its takeover bid failed and as both pursue separate acquisition strategies in the consolidating sector.

UBS and JPMorgan are helping Nasdaq decide what to do with the 61.3 million London Stock Exchange shares. Nasdaq says it wants to sell them, but could not guarantee that it would.

Nasdaq said it would use $1 billion of any proceeds from a sale to pay off senior term debt and the rest to buy back shares.

It said it was pursuing the sale because it believed its current stock price did not adequately reflect the value of its London Stock Exchange stake.

Nasdaq estimated the stake sale would lift its stand-alone 2008 earnings per share by about 30 cents to 35 cents each.

London Stock Exchange shares rose 2.4 percent to 1,300 pence, or $25.83, in early trading Monday. Nasdaq shares closed at $31.75 Friday.

London exchange officials declined to comment.

Since Nasdaqs takeover for the London exchange failed earlier this year, the London Stock Exchange has agreed to acquire the Milan exchange Borsa Italiana for 1.6 billion, or $3.16 billion, a deal set to dilute Nasdaqs stake to about 22 percent.

Meanwhile, Nasdaq is now locked in a battle with Borse Dubai to buy Nordic exchange operator OMX.

Borse Dubais chief executive, Per Larsson, said Monday that he did not see any industrial logic in OMX merging with Nasdaq.

“There are conflicting technological platforms, conflicting market models,” he said.

“There are conflicting brands where the Nasdaq brand will take over and the OMX brand will gradually disappear,” he said. “There are conflicting regulatory policies in the Nordic region and in the United States. I have difficulty in seeing why this has industrial logic,” said Larsson, the former chief executive of OMX.

Borse Dubais cash offer for the Nordic and Baltic bourse owner on Friday trumped an agreed $3.7 billion cash-and-share bid from Nasdaq.

LONDON: Low-cost airline chiefs criticized increasingly heavy regulation and taxes on Tuesday, claiming they are unfairly carrying the burden of concerns about the impact of flying on the environment.

EasyJet Chief Executive Andy Harrison led calls for a change to regulation of the industry by proposing a new taxation system for Britain that would charge airlines based on the efficiency of planes and the distance traveled.

Harrison said that most budget airlines were more efficient than the traditional carriers because their fleets were newer and more fuel efficient.

“Low-cost aviation is being almost demonized,” Harrison said at the opening of the annual World Low Cost Airlines Congress. “We are being charged with destroying the planet.”

John Hanlon, secretary general of the European Low Fares Airline Association, said that the growth of the low-cost industry had opened up air travel “from the prerogative of the wealthy few to something that everybody can contemplate.”

Low-cost carriers were also broadening the financial community by allowing staff from smaller businesses to travel, Hanlon said.

Statistics from the Official Airline Guide show that low-cost flights now account for 16 percent of flights and 20 percent of all seats worldwide, up from 14 percent and 17 percent a year ago.

Budget airlines plan to offer more than 58 million seats on more than 392,000 flights worldwide this month, compared with 47 million seats on more than 326,000 flights in September 2006.

Hanlon said that industry growth in Europe had been facilitated by deregulation a decade ago, but tightening rules were threatening further growth.

“We need to be vigilant we dont become progressively re-regulated almost by stealth,” he said.

However, low-cost airlines have yet to form a consensus on how to tackle green issues.

Harrison acknowledges that global warming is a “clear and present danger” that requires “intelligent debate.”

Ryanair Holdings Group PLC Chief Executive Michael OLeary has been more outspoken in his rejection of the notion that aircraft were a significant generator of greenhouse gases. He has said power plants were responsible for a quarter of the worlds carbon emissions while aviation accounted for less than 2 percent.

Harrison said Tuesday that the air passenger duty introduced by the British government in February to help compensate for damage to the climate from carbon emissions, which imposes a duty on individual passengers, should be scrapped.

The duty, or APD, is not imposed on cargo flights or private jets and ignores load factor and the aircraft type.

“You pay the same APD whether flying on new easyJet planes or older Alitalia aircraft,” Harrison said. “You pay the same whether the aircraft is 80 percent full or empty.”

Harrison said that easyJet passengers would pay less under the system the carrier proposes because its fleet of 137 planes has an average age of 2.3 years, making them “greener” than fleets of rival full-cost carriers.

However, Virgin Atlantic Airways has said it wants to retain the APD for short-haul flights while British Airways PLC wants to use the duty to offset carbon emissions.

Harrison also supports an EU plan for airlines to join an emissions trading system.

The United States has alleged that such a plan is incompatible with international aviation rules if applied to all air flights in and out of Europe.

U.S. officials warned that they could approve the plan only if it was limited to airlines flying within Europe. Harrison has said that easyJet would support the plan only if it included all flights in and out of Europe.

Hanlon said that around 12 percent of emissions in the European Union could be cut further with consolidation of traffic control.

More than 130 airlines are meeting in London over two days to discuss a range of issues from regulation to fuel prices.

On competition issues, Harrison criticized EU regulations that require airlines to compensate passengers when flights are delayed.

“Eurostar can cancel as many trains as they like with no regulation,” he said.

In the Asia-Pacific, Tiger Airways Chief Executive Officer Tony Davis said the biggest challenge was related to infrastructure with large airlines like Qantas also in charge of passenger security at airports across Australia.

(06-05) 12:24 PDT New York (AP) —

The airline industry boosted many one-way fares by up to $10 late Monday, as carriers struggle with weakening domestic results, though most have had scant success in making increases stick recently.

Late Monday, Continental Airlines Inc. raised one-way fares in 30 percent of the top U.S. markets by $5 for advanced-purchase tickets and by $10 for last-minute seats, according to farecompare.com, an airfare tracking Web site. That triggered competitors American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines, United Airlines and US Airways to match on overlapping routes, as well on some routes out of hub airports.

It’s the industry’s fifth or sixth attempt to increase fares this year, said Rick Seaney, chief executive of farecompare.com. If it succeeds, it would be the year’s first, as prior attempts unraveled within a week after low-cost carriers refused to join in, he said.

Last year, when carriers were flush amid strong demand and relatively flat capacity of airplane seats, Seaney said almost all the industry’s attempts succeeded. There were about seven.

By the count of Jamie Baker, a JP Morgan analyst, the big network airlines have tried to raise fares seven times this year, with two successes. Baker also wrote in a research report that low-cost carrier AirTran Holdings Inc. was the first to raise fares Monday, increasing one-way fares by $5 to $10 by midday.

He described the industry’s most recent attempt as a small fare increase. American Airlines raised about 6,000 fares. A typical broad-based increase covers about 300,000 fares, he wrote.

“Given increasingly poor sector sentiment, news of AirTran’s fare increase may lift the spirits of some, though we ascribe little fundamental value to the effort,” Baker wrote.

Investors have hammered airline stocks recently amid flagging domestic results, hurt by sharp competition from low-cost carriers and higher fuel costs.

Continental said late last week its overall passenger unit revenue Д an important industry gauge measuring revenue divided by capacity Д fell an estimated 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent from May 2006 levels. Analysts said Wall Street expected about 1 percent growth.

Continental is the lone major U.S. airline to report its unit-revenue trends monthly, and the relatively weak results helped drag down stocks across the industry Monday.

Airline shares were mixed in Tuesday morning trading, with the Amex Airline Index split among five gainers and six decliners.

Among the biggest index gainers, Continental rose 51 cents to $37.95.