FRANKFURT (AFP) ― Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest carmaker, said on Thursday it had received approval from Chinese authorities to increase its stake in MAN, the final hurdle in the takeover process. “The Chinese competition authorities have approved the increase of the stake of Volkswagen in MAN,” VW said in a statement. Approval by the Chinese competition authorities marked the completion of all ...

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, the world’s largest maker of luxury vehicles, reported better-than- expected profit in the third quarter as demand for the X3 sport- utility vehicle offset lower 1-Series sales. Earnings before interest and taxes rose 44 percent to 1.72 billion euros ($2.35 billion) from 1.19 billion euros a year earlier, the Munich-based company said today. Profit beat the 1.58 bill...

Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. posted U.S. sales declines for October, rather than the increases they had forecast, while Nissan Motor Co. and Hyundai Motor Co. led gains among Asian carmakers amid improving demand. Deliveries fell 7.9 percent from a year earlier for Toyota, Asia’s biggest automaker, and 0.5 percent for Honda, as both of the Japanese companies did better than analysts ha...

Honda Motor is also mulling resuming imports of its U.S.-built cars to here. “We manufacture cars in China, India and Thailand but our marker analysis shows Korean consumers would prefer U.S.-built cars. So if we were to make a detour of our products to avoid the high yen, its likely to come from the U.S.,” an official at Honda Korea said. Korea’s car market may be one tenth of China’s in terms...

CANNES, France (AP) -- Leaders of the world's 20 most powerful economies failed to agree on how to increase the firepower of the International Monetary Fund, so that it can help stem the European debt crisis, though they acknowledged its resources should be boosted. The leaders struggled to reach concrete resolutions at their summit in the French resort of Cannes that has focused on Greece's pol...

Emergence of pension lottery jumpstarts the boom Korea is in the grip of lottery fever. The nation is on course to sell 3 trillion won ($2.69 billion) worth of tickets this year, up 25 percent from 2010. The Finance Ministry, in charge of lotteries, has stopped its TV promotions with celebrities in an effort to slow the industry’s growth. The explosive popularity of lotteries this year isn’t j...

SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won called for global efforts to strengthen social corporate responsibility to achieve the sustainable growth of poor countries. Chey made the call during a roundtable discussion at the meeting of business leaders on the sidelines of G20 Summit in Cannes, France, on Thursday. Chey attracted support from participants when he proposed to global companies to set up “soci...