Munich - Germany's biggest engineering group Siemens AG confirmed Wednesday its business year outlook after reporting a surge in both orders and sales in the company's fiscal third quarter.

The Munich-based group said that new orders jumped by 21 per cent to 23.7 billion euros (37.29 billion) with sales rising by 10 per cent to 19.18 billion euros.

Nicosia, July 30: The Saudi Basic Industries Corporation ( SABIC), one of the world’s largest petrochemical companies, has reported preliminary consolidated profits of SR 14.5 billion for the first six months of the year, compared with SR 12.8 billion in the corresponding period of 2007.

These profits are the highest ever reported profits in one quarter and represent an increase of 13 per cent.