COMPANIES

The global car market has bottomed and is on track for 60 million units sales this year and next, Carlos Ghosn, who heads Japan's Nissan Motor Co and France's Renault SA, said on Sunday.

Over 1,000 Toyota and Lexus owners have reported sudden, spontaneous acceleration of their vehicles since 2001, including crashes blamed for 19 deaths, far more than earlier disclosed, the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday.

Manfred Wennemer resigned from his post as one of the five board members of the Opel Trust on Saturday in protest against the constant interference by politicians in Germany surrounding planned sale of Opel.

Automobile output in Brazil rose sharply in October as factories ramped up production after a slump the previous month, the national automakers' association Anfavea said on Monday.

U.S. retailers are poised to defy gloom this week as earnings expectations have improved, but the big test will be what they say about holiday shopping.

General Motors Chief Executive Fritz Henderson was due in Germany on Monday to start talks aimed at soothing workers' tempers over the carmaker's plan to reorganize European arm Opel on its own.

Opel's top German labor leader said on Sunday he was willing to hold negotiations over a restructuring of the European carmaker under its parent General Motors so long as it gains greater independence.

General Motors Co will probably stick to a plan to cut costs at Opel by 30 percent after deciding to restructure the European subsidiary itself rather than sell it, Bob Lutz, a GM executive set to become Opel's chairman, was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Home values in the United States stabilized in the third quarter and fewer mortgages were underwater, but impending foreclosures could threaten to delay a housing market recovery, real estate website Zillow.com said on Monday.

The joint venture that borrowed heavily to buy Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in 2006 could be among the first to take advantage of changes in U.S. tax law that let borrowers seek payment relief, when it said last week that it could not keep paying interest on a $3 billion loan.

Kraft Foods turned hostile in its bid for Cadbury on Monday, making a formal but unchanged takeover offer which now triggers a bid battle for the British confectioner which could last up to three months.

Cadbury's shares edged up by early afternoon on Monday as the clock ticked toward a 1700 GMT deadline for Kraft Foods to either make a formal takeover bid for the British confectionery group or walk away.

A Las Vegas casino company and a Chinese bank have set the price range for their upcoming Hong Kong stock offerings, hoping to raise up to $7.35 billion combined in what would be the world's fourth- and fifth-largest IPOs of the year.

Small wind energy companies could be taken over cheap because fresh funding for the sector is set to flow selectively to bigger names, placing them in a stronger negotiating position.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc said it plans to limit the amount of business underwritten by its reinsurance operations, as it prepares to spend roughly $26 billion to buy railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

California was awarded $19.5 million in a settlement against Royal Dutch Shell Plc's U.S. unit for not storing fuel properly at filling stations in the state, Attorney General Jerry Brown said on Friday.

Citigroup Inc said on Friday that new accounting rules for securitization trusts may prevent the bank from funding some of its assets with a top debt rating.

Freddie Mac, the second largest provider of U.S. residential mortgage funding, on Friday posted a loss of $5 billion in the third quarter and predicted it would need more government support amid a prolonged deterioration in housing.

Shares of printing-equipment maker Duoyuan Printing Inc fell in their market debut on Friday after pricing at the low end of expectations.

Dollar General is set to go public next week, but the discount retailer could see mixed results in its closely watched initial public offering as its private equity backers have valued the company richly.

Telefonica's decision to sweeten its offer for Brazilian telecom rival GVT dealt a major blow to Vivendi's plans to acquire the carrier, sources close to the transaction told Reuters on Friday, suggesting the French media giant may walk away from the deal.

Shares of Magna International Inc surged nearly 15 percent on Friday, a day after it posted a surprise quarterly profit and said it would focus on its core auto-parts business after the collapse of its deal to buy a stake in General Motors Co's Opel unit.

Traffic for the top three U.S. airlines slumped in October, but load factors for most of the nine largest carriers rose and the decline in unit revenue showed signs of slowing down.

U.S. lawmakers said on Friday they introduced a measure aimed at overhauling an annual fund intended to ensure nationwide telephone service in high-cost, rural areas by including money for high-speed Internet use.

Halliburton Co has won a broad five-year oilfield service contract from Saudi Aramco to develop wells in the world's largest oil field, South Ghawar, the company said on Friday.

Home goods retailer A.C. Moore Arts & Crafts Inc posted a wider-than-expected third-quarter loss as same-store sales fell and increased promotional activities hurt margins, sending its shares down as much as 18 percent.

General Motors Co said on Friday the head of its European operations, Carl-Peter Forster, is leaving, three days after the automaker's decision to scrap a planned sale of its Opel unit.

French nuclear reactor builder Areva is to decide the buyer for its transmission and distribution (T&D) business mid-November, with bidders sending in final offers this Monday.

Canada's Gold Wheaton Gold Corp said its Barbados unit agreed with First Uranium Corp to buy gold from its South African unit for an initial payment of $50 million.