One of the longest running contract negotiations in the history of the Russian information technology industry appears to have come to a close this quarter. A $140m agreement was signed between the Sabre Group and other US companies to finance the Sirena-3 project, a computerized flight booking and reservation system for the Russian airline industry. IBM Corp first won this project back in 1992 but ever since it has been mired in political and funding problems. However it appears that now the Russian government has agreed to guarantee an US Export-Import Bank loan that the deal will finally go ahead. Under this latest agreement, the New York branch of Germany’s Commerzbank AG and Llama of Arkansas, agreed to provide $90m of the financing. The entire $90m financing package is guaranteed by the US Export- Import Bank, except for $4.6m that the two American-based lenders will assume as their risk. The remaining financing will be provided by the American suppliers Sabre, IBM and AT&T Tridom. To implement Sirena-3, a Central Processing Complex will be established in 1997-98. IBM will provide information technology services to the Complex using S/390 hardware and TPF 4.1/OS software.
