CHINA

Ford Motor Co will eliminate its Mercury brand which has seen sales and investment plunge in recent years, closing out a vehicle lineup created in the 1930s by Edsel Ford, the automaker said on Wednesday.

For the second time in nine months the Reserve Bank of Australia left rates unchanged at 4.5% as expected and the Aussie fell as the RBA signalled policy makers may keep borrowing costs steady as 'the effects of earlier expansionary policy measures will be diminishing.'

Ford Motor Co is set to announce on Wednesday plans to eliminate its Mercury brand, whose sales and investment have plunged in recent years, a source briefed on the matter said.

Jan Ake Jonsson, chief executive officer of loss-making Saab Automobile, is one of the main candidates for the top job at Volvo Cars.

Ford Motor Co said on Wednesday its U.S. sales rose 22 percent in May for all of its brands from a year earlier and increased its second-quarter North American production plan by 15,000 vehicles.

In a reversal of the classic picket-line clash, Chinese workers at a Honda auto parts plant held out for higher wages this week while men in yellow caps from the government-backed union tried to end their strike.

Production line workers at Foxconn's southern China manufacturing hub will get a 30 percent pay rise, as top customer Apple Inc called recent suicides at the plant troubling but said the site was not a sweatshop.

Honda Motor said a key car parts factory in south China resumed full production on Wednesday, ending more than two weeks of disruption after workers downed tools to demand higher wages in a high-profile and sometimes violent strike.

Agricultural Bank of China may struggle to get the kind of valuation it wants as it gears up to launch the world's biggest IPO into a market that has slumped by a fifth in just six weeks.

Some of the world's richest central banks will not stop investing in the euro, supporting its reserve status, despite the sovereign debt crisis hammering the euro zone's currency, government sources said.

The World Gold Council (WGC) has announced the appointment of Jammy Chan as its Head of Investment in Greater China, effective immediately. Mr Chan will be based in Beijing and will report to Roland Wang, General Manager, Greater China at the WGC.

Central bank reserve holdings have exploded globally in the last decade and nowhere more so than in Asia, where the biggest piles of cash are. Since 2000, global foreign exchange reserves have grown by a staggering $6.15 trillion and stood at $8.09 trillion at the end of 2009, or 14 percent of the world's gross domestic product, International Monetary Fund data showed.

Production line workers at Foxconn's southern China manufacturing hub will get a 30 percent pay rise, as top customer Apple Inc called recent suicides at the plant troubling but said the site was not a sweatshop.

UK insurer Prudential Plc is pulling out of its bold $35.5 billion takeover of AIG's Asian life insurance arm, ending a 3-month battle with shareholders who had argued the deal was over-priced.

Asian stocks followed Wall Street down on Wednesday as jitters over the euro zone's debt crisis prompted investors to keep cutting riskier positions, while the euro steadied after hitting a four-year low.

Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs finds troubling a string of worker deaths at Foxconn, the contract manufacturer that assembles the company's iPhones and iPads, but said its factory in China is not a sweatshop.

British insurer Prudential plc is withdrawing from a $35.5 billion deal to buy American International Group Inc's Asian life insurance business AIA, paving the way for a potential listing of AIA.

World oil prices extended overnight losses in Asian trade Wednesday as the dollar moved up amid weak market trends. Light sweet crude for July delivery was seen trading at $72.04 a barrel at 11.30 a.m Singapore time while Brent crude was at $72.27 a barrel in London. Analysts said after the long holiday weekend, the market was focused on economic storm clouds in the Euro zone and China.

Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs said on Tuesday Foxconn, the global contract manufacturer that assembles the company's iPhones and iPads in China, is not a sweatshop.

Manufacturing grew for a 10th straight month in May and construction spending notched its fastest pace in nearly 10 years in April, suggesting the U.S. economy will add jobs and weather Europe's debt storm.

Stocks were little changed on Tuesday after data showed manufacturing expanded for a tenth straight month, but worries of wider fallout from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico kept a lid on gains.