GENERAL MOTORS

France reacted cautiously on Tuesday to the idea of a tie-up between carmaker Renault, its Japanese partner Nissan and U.S. rival General Motors as Renault shares fell.

An audacious plan for a tie-up between General Motors Corp and Renault that would create a $100 billion global auto giant was set to come before the board of the French carmaker late on Monday.

qGeneral Motors Corp. said on Monday that 35,000 workers - or almost a third of its hourly work force - had accepted payouts to retire and leave the company, topping expectations and putting the world's largest automaker two years ahead of schedule on planned job cuts.

Chrysler Group, a unit of DaimlerChrysler AG, will roll out a new program of discounted vehicle pricing in July in a move intended to clear an overhang of unsold 2006 models, the company said on Wednesday.

Workers angered by General Motors' plan to shut down an assembly plant in Portugal will stage protests starting next week at GM factories in Germany and Spain, a labor source told Reuters on Friday.

More than 20,000 blue-collar workers at General Motors Corp. have accepted buyout offers, surpassing the automaker's internal target, with a month to go before the deadline, the Detroit News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the situation.

Insurer Royal & Sun Alliance is being sued in Britain for about $1 billion by General Motors, the U.S. auto giant, in a long-running dispute about personal injury claims linked to asbestos, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.

General Motors Corp.'s chief executive saw his 2005 compensation almost halved from a year earlier, the company disclosed on Friday, on the same day he promised shareholders to turn around GM's North American operations and apologized for accounting errors.