Latest Busines News

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - General Motors Europe President Carl-Peter Forster expects to sell German unit Opel to Canadian auto parts supplier Magna soon, he told a German newspaper. “I am quite confident after a top-level meeting of GM and Magna, where broad consent was reached,” Forster told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) in an interview which will be published on Sunday. “It’s only about details.” He did not give any details on the date, but said “it would be great if it ..read more

U.K. telecommunications group BT Group is offering workers a year off in return for 75% drop in salary. [Read more...]

Out here in the rolling hills of the Potomac Valley, pickup trucks may outnumber the dogs. So it is a great place to test the latest truck from GMC. [Read more...]

Little more than halfway into her first term, the governor says she not only wouldn’t be seeking re-election, but that she would be handing over the reins of office. [Read more...]

By Martha Graybow and Boris Groendahl NEW YORK/VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian fund manager Sonja Kohn did not receive any kickbacks from Bernard Madoff to steer Bank Medici customer funds to the swindler’s investment business, a Medici lawyer said on Friday. “There were no Madoff payments to Kohn. There were no kickbacks,” lawyer Andreas Theiss told Reuters. Theiss reiterated prior statements that Kohn, whose Bank Medici ran several funds that funneled at least $3.3 billion to Madoff, was one of Madoff’s ..read more

European shares edged lower on Friday with U.S. equity markets closed for a holiday, with utilities and metals producers dragging lower. [Read more...]

By Natsuko Waki LONDON (Reuters) - World stocks fell on Friday after a disappointing U.S. jobs report and a sluggish euro zone services sector survey reinforced expectations that the process of recovery in the global economy would be long and slow. U.S. employers cut far more jobs than expected last month and the unemployment rate hit 9.5 percent, the highest in nearly 26 years. While analysts caution that jobs data is a lagging indicator and unemployment can still rise when ..read more

U.S., U.K. and Austrian prosecutors are investigating a former Austrian fund manager they believe was paid more than $40 million in kickbacks to funnel billions of dollars of investments to Bernard Madoff. Prosecutors from all three investigations believe Mr. Madoff paid kickbacks to Sonja Kohn while she was chairwoman of Austria’s Bank Medici AG via separate companies she controlled, according to affidavits detailing the investigations and hundreds of documents collected by Austrian prosecutors that were reviewed by The Wall ..read more

FOOT LOCKER, THE NATION’S LARGEST RETAILER OF athletic footwear, is poised to seize victory from the jaws of de feet. The New York-based chain, with about $5 billion of annual revenue and 3,641 mostly mall-based stores, felt the sting of recession long before the rest of the retail sector. Sales at stores open at least a year — a critical retail metric — have been sliding since 2006, amid a fashion shift toward casual shoes and away from bulky ..read more

By Leah Schnurr NEW YORK (Reuters) - With Wall Street stuck in a range since May, the start of second-quarter earnings season next week could prove to be a decisive factor for determining how much faith investors should have in an economic recovery. After a rally of as much as 40 percent for the S&P 500 on expectations the economy will begin to turn around by year end, analysts will hone in on companies’ projections to see if their hopes ..read more