Hopewell loses appeal

HOPEWELL Holdings' appeal against its disqualification from building a Philippine power plant was rejected and the contract is expected to be re-bid.

A turbine Hopewell planned to use was developed in part by blacklisted Westinghouse Electric Corp, a committee of the state-owned National Power Corp concluded after a review.

Napocor threw out the winning US$1.54 billion bid by Hopewell subsidiary Consolidated Electric Power Asia in June, because of claims that turbines supplied by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries had ties to Westinghouse, which had been banned from providing equipment last year after failure to settle a corruption lawsuit over the US company's alleged bribes paid to former Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos.