Rolls-Royce has signed a long-term service contract with Emirates worth £1.4 billion.

Under the terms of the TotalCare agreement, Rolls-Royce technicians will maintain the Trent engines of 70 Airbus aircraft that Emirates is due to acquire over the next few years.

The deal follows Rolls-Royce’s $1.2 billion contract signed in November to service engines on a further 48 Emirates aeroplanes. The number of Emirates aircraft now being serviced under the TotalCare scheme is 128.

Over 40 years after the original Boeing 747 stunned the world in September 1968, Boeing unveiled its new 747-8 Intercontinental yesterday at the same factory in Everett, Washington.

Sunday's event, branded "Incredible, Again", took place in front of a crowd of almost 10,000 Boeing employees, their families, government officials, partners, suppliers and industry VIPs.

Aker Solutions has received a letter of intent from Statoil for the engineering, procurement and construction of a subsea workover system for the Vigdis North East development on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.

Vigdis North East is an oil and gas development situated in water depths of around 280 metres in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea. Aker’s work will include provision of a complete range of components for open water workover operations.

Microsoft and Nokia today announced plans to form a broad strategic partnership to create what they describe as “a new global mobile ecosystem” to take on Google and Apple in an all-out phone war.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (who left Microsoft to join Nokia last September) and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer have issued an “open letter” outlining a summary of their plans. Here is the letter in full:

Tullow Oil has announced a new discovery of oil and gas offshore Ghana, close to the Jubilee Field.

The company said it discovered 73 metres of net hydrocarbons in the field, in which it has a 22.896 per cent stake. The well is located in the West Cape Three Points licence, outside the Jubilee unit boundary.

Coca-Cola has reported soaring profits ahead of expectations in 2010, largely due to a revitalized North American market and the buyout of its main bottler last year.

The Atlanta, Georgia based drinks maker enjoyed worldwide growth of 6 percent in the fourth quarter and 5 percent for the whole year.

Fourth-quarter profit more than tripled to $5.8 billion, from $1.5 billion in the same period a year earlier, pushing earnings per share to $2.46. The average analyst estimate was 72 cents.

The £5.5 billion redevelopment of Battersea Power Station in London has been given the green light following approval from the UK government’s communities secretary.

Treasury Holdings plans to redevelop the site with 10 million square feet of office space, shops, hotels, a conference centre and 3,400 homes.

Siemens Energy, Inc. has been awarded a contract for gas-insulated transmission lines by Northeast Utilities as part of the New England East-West Solution (NEEWS).

Siemens will produce 115 kV and 345 kV gas-insulated transmission lines (GILT) for the Agawam (Massachusetts) and North Bloomfield (Connecticut) substation additions as part of the Greater Springfield Reliability Project, one of four major transmission projects comprising the New England East-West Solution.

Irish engineering group Kentz has announced the acquisition of South African engineering services firm RNE Engineering and Projects for €7.4 million (R73 million).

Kentz said the deal will enable the group to offer a wider range of niche engineering, procurement and construction solutions in southern Africa, as well as supporting the opportunity to jointly tender for certain EPC contracts.