Volkswagen to buy 20% stake in Suzuki Motor

  Germany’s Volkswagen (VW) is to buy a 20% stake in Japan’s Suzuki Motor for 222.5bn yen ($2.5bn; £1.5bn). Suzuki said it would acquire a stake in VW in return, spending "up to one half" of the funds it receives on VW shares. In a joint statement the two carmakers said that they had "reached [...]

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President Barack Obama announces job creation plan

  US President Barack Obama has outlined a number of proposals aimed at boosting employment, including winding up the $700bn (£425bn) US bank bail-out fund. Mr Obama said the remaining money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp) could be used to facilitate lending to small businesses. Speaking at the Brookings Institution think tank, he [...]

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Car sales and output pass the 12 million mark in China

Chinese car sales and production both exceeded 12 million between January and November, state media has said. The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers expects car sales and output to top 13 million for the full year, the Xinhua News Agency reported. China has never produced more than 10 million cars in one year before. State [...]

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Bernanke defends his Federal Reserve record

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has defended the central bank’s response to the global crisis. He made the statement to a Senate panel sitting to consider his nomination for a second four-year term. Under Mr Bernanke’s tenure, the Fed has cut interest rates close to zero, as well as spending $3 trillion (£1.8tn) to buoy [...]

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Google to limit free news access

  Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced. The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages. Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent [...]

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US stocks higher on positive economic news

  US shares headed higher on Tuesday after a flurry of economic data pointed to a rebound in the economy – and took dealers’s minds off the Dubai story. Better reports on construction and housing suggested there was something to look forward to. The housing figures, from the National Association of Realtors, provided the best [...]

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eBay fined in LVMH perfume sales row

  A Parisian court has fined eBay 1.7m euros (£1.5m) after ruling that it had not kept to an injunction banning users from selling on LVMH perfumes. eBay users in France are blocked from selling certain branded perfumes -including Christian Dior, Givenchy and Kenzo – on the internet auction site. eBay said the injunction hurt [...]

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Dubai banks given extra liquidity

  The central bank of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has said it will provide banks with extra liquidity. The news comes days after the state-owned Dubai World said it would ask for an extension on repaying its debts, sending world stock markets tumbling. The liquidity will be available to all UAE banks as well [...]

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Shares hit by Dubai debt problems

  European shares have been hit by concerns over Dubai’s financial health, after a government-owned company asked for an extension on repaying its debts. The UK’s FTSE 100 index lost 3.2%, its biggest one-day fall since March, after Dubai World asked creditors to postpone upcoming repayments until May 2010. Banks were hit particularly hard on [...]

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