COMPANIES

Irish budget airline Ryanair cut full year profit forecasts to the lower end of its range on Monday due to falling yields, sending its shares down 10 percent and impacting the broader airlines sector.

Irish airline Ryanair on Monday posted a better-than-expected 550 percent rise in first quarter profit thanks to a large reduction in fuel costs but said its outlook remained cautious for the rest of the year.

RHJ International, a bidder for carmaker Opel, is not ruling out selling Opel back to U.S. parent General Motors after returning it to health, RHJ's chief executive told a German newspaper on Sunday.

Phone maker Ericsson AB has won the auction for part of bankrupt Nortel Networks Corp's wireless unit with a bid of $1.13 billion in cash, the companies said today.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp is expected to report a group operating loss of around 20 billion yen for the April-June quarter, marking a second straight quarterly loss, the Nikkei business daily said.

Porsche's owner families have agreed with a key Volkswagen shareholder that controversial clauses of a law protecting Volkswagen from hostile takeovers would be absorbed into the by-laws of Europe's biggest carmaker itself, a German magazine said on Saturday.

Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann has told Porsche's owner families of the urgency to stump up cash in order to pay down the company's debts, which have risen to 14 billion euros (20 billion pounds), a German magazine said on Saturday.

The Opel Trust, the German body which has been responsible for Opel since June, said on Saturday it has not made any decisions yet regarding the takeover offers for the carmaker.

China's two oil majors will see robust growth in earnings this yea mainly due to the new oil pricing system and more stable crude prices, China.org said on Friday, citing analysts .

AMR Corp , parent of American Airlines, said on Friday it would raise by $5 the fee it charges to check a first or second bag on domestic flights.

China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) has signed a cooperation agreement with China Development Bank (CDB) to get credit limit of 100 billion yuan (about $15 billion) from the bank, bringing the total tally of CNNC's intentional credit limits to 450 billion yuan (about $66 billion) with the offers from eight other banks, State Assets Administration Committee (SASAC) said in its website on Thursday.

Most people are expecting less business opportunities in the third quarter due to the financial downturn, however, they are generally optimistic about the job situation, Hong Kong officials said on Friday.

Loblaw Co, Canada's biggest grocery store chain, warned of a tough second half of the year on Friday, even as it reported above-forecast profits and a plan to buy the country's largest Asian food retailer.

KKR Private Equity Investors LP on Friday launched a consent solicitation, seeking approval of its unitholders to proceed with the planned combination with private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR).

Qu Jianguo, unable to borrow from banks to fund his small water treatment business, is hoping a Nasdaq-style second board in China, due for launch this fall, will help fill a hole in his country's financial system.

Three private equity firms have agreed to buy a combined about 10 percent stake of a flagship unit of China UnionPay, as the country's monopoly card payments service provider aims to go public next year, sources with direct knowledge of the deal said on Friday.

Vitamin Shoppe's parent company has filed to raise as much as $143.8 million in an initial public offering.

Final bids are due by the end of Friday for the National Hockey League's Phoenix Coyotes in federal bankruptcy court in Arizona, even as the team disclosed it continued to lose money last season.

Italian automaker Fiat won unconditional approval from the European Commission on Friday to acquire bankrupt U.S. automaker Chrysler CBS.UL as the EU executive said the deal would not hurt competition.

U.S. retail auto sales are expected to decline 19 percent in July from a year ago, marking an improvement over declines of more than 30 percent in the first half of 2009, an influential industry tracking service said on Friday.

China's Beijing Auto said intellectual property issues were behind its failure to reach a deal with General Motors [GM.UL] over its Opel unit.

Japan has sent a letter of concern to the United States on a bill recently passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, which contains a provision similar to

Representatives of the families that own Porsche (PSHG_p.DE) are set to take up seats on Volkswagen's (VOWG.DE) supervisory board vacated by former Porsche Chief Executive Wendelin Wiedeking and his finance chief Holger Haerter, sources close to Volkswagen said Friday.

China could take a stake in a $3.3 billion port and rail infrastructure project in Western Australia's Mid-West iron ore belt, one of the firms involved in the project said on Friday.

Arch Coal Inc posted a second-quarter loss on Friday and cut its production target for a third time this year as weak demand and coal prices hurt sales volumes and forced production curtailments.

Drugmaker Merck & Co Inc announced a proposed settlement on Friday to resolve litigation challenging its planned merger with Schering-Plough Corp.

Roche Holding AG's MabThera cancer drug has received backing from Europe to treat patients whose chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) returns, the Swiss drugmaker said on Friday.

India's Bharti Airtel and South Africa's MTN are expected to extend exclusive talks by at least two to three weeks for a proposed merger, four sources familiar with the deal said on Friday.

Freddie Mac (FRE.P)(FRE.N), the second-largest U.S. home funding company, said on Friday its mortgage investment portfolio grew by an annualized 9.3 percent rate in June, while delinquencies on loans it guarantees accelerated.