Patrick Kron, chief executive of Alstom, insisted that the French turbine and trains group would meet aggressive performance targets for 2010 in spite of the current financial crisis that has thrown doubts over the prospects for capital intensive industrial projects.

“It might happen that some decisions are delayed – I don’t know,” Mr Kron said on Thursday. “But we work in a very particular sector in which decisions are not taken from one month to another. They are projects over a very long period.”