UNITED KINGDOM

General Motors's turnaround plan for its European carmaker Opel will likely be completed only in January, GM Europe President Nick Reilly wrote in a blog posting on Thursday.

The Bank of England left its asset purchase programme intact at 200 billion pounds ($325 billion) and held interest rates at 0.5 percent on Thursday, as widely expected.

British and Irish workers at Cadbury Plc will launch a major campaign on Tuesday to fend off a hostile bid from Kraft Foods Inc and so avoid job losses and pay cuts at the confectionery maker.

Government bonds in Australia and South Korea fell on Thursday as investors pushed forward expectations for interest rate rises in 2010 because of bullish growth views, while Asian stocks slid on year-end profit taking.

It wasn't too long ago big-time hedge fund managers like James Pallotta were erecting monuments to themselves. In Pallotta's case, it was a $21 million Georgian-style mansion he built in 2007 in Weston, a leafy Boston suburb uncomfortable with such displays of wealth.

Braced to cut costs when Britain is facing the biggest government deficit in its history, a London council is trying the budget airline approach.

Angry London bankers and traders accused finance minister Alistair Darling on Wednesday of lip service to appease the poor with a levy on bank bonuses.

Demand for executive talent at Wall Street firms has rebounded strongly, and the coming bonus season may see an exodus to overseas rivals that have no limits on pay, the CEO of the world's largest executive search firm, Korn/Ferry International Inc (KFY.N), said

The Australian Dollar opens marginally higher today at 0.9060 after another bout of risk aversion saw the unit trade as low as 0.9017 during Asian trade on Wednesday.

EU regulators are optimistic about achieving a satisfactory result from their review of U.S. software company Oracle Corp's (ORCL.O) plan to buy Sun Microsystems Inc (JAVA.O) despite competition concerns, Europe's antitrust chief said.

Britain's climate efforts were questioned on Wednesday after it said it would auction off rather than cancel millions of carbon permits to come from a closed steel plant, equal to one percent of UK greenhouse gas emissions.

British finance minister Alistair Darling announced plans on Wednesday to support new low carbon industries, cut gas emissions from homes and boost the embryonic electric car sector.

Shares in India's largest vehicle maker, Tata Motors Ltd, have more than quadrupled this year riding a pick-up in sales on the back of a recovering economy.

Europe's food industry is proving slow to buy palm oil certified under a new scheme as produced without destroying tropical rain forests, the head of Germany's edible oil industry association OVID said on Wednesday.

Taking a page out of Apple's book, France Telecom's mobile phone unit Orange launched its own shop to sell downloadable videos, games, music and other content to its 130 million mobile phone subscribers.

The United Nation's climate change summit has been billed as the last hope to save the world from itself. Brought on by a rise of man-made greenhouse gases, the earth is slowly inching towards a man-induced climate disaster, urgent for coordinated action...or so the saying went.

Four nations proposed guiding principles for green funds on Wednesday, hoping to end deadlock at U.N. talks on ways to manage billions of dollars to help the poor cope with global warming.

Haifa Chemicals and Citi (C.N) said on Wednesday they had agreed to sell certified emission reduction (CER) credits after the Israeli company acquired new technology to cut its greenhouse gases.

China said on Wednesday it wanted the United States to offer sharper carbon cuts by 2020, and President Barack Obama's top aides promised robust engagement with world leaders at Copenhagen climate talks.

American pop singer-songwriter Pink will headline the 2010 Wireless festival in London's Hyde Park on July 2.

The dollar had earlier advanced broadly after Fitch downgraded Greece on Tuesday to below the single-A bracket for the first time in a decade, and prompted short covering in the U.S. currency and the yen.