July 6th, 2005

The engineering firm, ABB, has stated that it hopes to sort out its asbestos issues over the course of the year, but added that no deadlines could be given and there were no guarantees. The Swiss-based firm made a statement on Friday with regards to settling asbestos litigation and putting forward a settlement plan.

A company spokesman stated: "We are still optimistic the asbestos issue will be solved by the end of the year but there are no guarantees." The company did put forward an asbestos litigation settlement plan last year, but this was rejected and ABB had to revise the plan. It has now been revised, and will be filed in a US court in the near future.

Once the reworked settlement plan has been filed, company officials from ABB estimate that it will be the early part of next year before it is looked into by the bankruptcy court. Once this is done, and if the plan of $1.4 billion is accepted, ABB can start sorting out the variety of asbestos related cases against them.