Europe

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who put her political reputation on the line and said her government would dish out billions of euros to help a beleaguered Opel automaker stay in business, has lashed out at giant US carmaker General Motors, saying it would have to bear most of the cost of restructuring its troubled European Opel offshoot, after the giant American carmaker changed its about selling its German subsidiary, a decision that could cost 10,000 workers their jobs.

Senior members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet sent conflicting signals at the weekend over whether the government should provide aid to Opel, suggesting divisions within her government on the issue, Reuters reported. Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said in an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that he expected Opel's U.S. parent General Motors to shoulder the full burden of a restructuring of Opel. He left the door open to regional aid for Opel from the four states where the carmaker has plants, but said he did not expect GM to come to Berlin for federal funds.

In a related story, The Economist reported that one reason for keeping apace with European rivals is that size will become an important factor if consolidation among airlines goes global. The two airlines are already seeking antitrust immunity in America and in Europe for a tie-up with American Airlines, which would see all three co-ordinating over costs and revenues on transatlantic routes.

European Union regulators will next week approve KBC's restructuring and allow it to remain in banking and insurance in Belgium and eastern Europe, two sources familiar with the situation said on Friday. The European Commission is scrutinising whether an injection of €7 billion ($10.5 billion) into Belgium's KBC by the Belgian and Flemish regional governments complied with EU state aid rules. "The Commission's decision on KBC's restructuring plan is due on Wednesday," one of the sources told Reuters. "The key message is that KBC has kept its bancassurance model.

Kenmore, the property group which is reported to owe Lloyds bank around £700 million, has placed 21 of its companies into administration and a further two into receivership, accountants Grant Thornton said, Telegraph.co.uk reported. The Edinburgh-based company is a co-investing, trading and development property group with investments in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. It manages in excess of £1 billion of investments and has a development pipeline of £1.5 billion.

Germany has told General Motors it will have to come up with the money to refinance Opel, after the US carmaker cancelled the sale of its European arm, the BBC reported. Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle told GM executives that they had to be responsible for restructuring the unit. Germany had previously offered €4.5 billion ($6.7 billion ; £4.1 billion) to support Opel and protect German jobs if the company was sold to car parts maker Magna. On cancelling the sale last week, GM said it would still seek state aid.

The bid by the German government to secure Opel's rescue has ended in fiasco after General Motors pulled out of a deal to sell its troubled European subsidiary, Spiegel Online reported. A German chancellor has rarely been given such short shrift by the chief executive of an industrial corporation. Merkel and half the German cabinet had spent more than a year in negotiations with the US company so that GM's German subsidiary, Opel, could be sold to a consortium of investors headed by the Canadian-Austrian automotive supplier Magna and the Russian Sberbank.

A team of General Motors Co. executives will arrive in Germany on Monday to fine-tune a restructuring plan for Adam Opel GmbH and search out a new leader for the European unit, company officials said. The U.S. auto maker said Friday that Carl-Peter Forster, who worked for GM for more than nine years, is quitting as chief executive of GM Europe, The Wall Street Journal reported. The decision follows a vote by the company's board of directors on Tuesday to scrap a plan to sell control of the German Opel unit to Magna International Inc. and Russia's Sberbank.

Authorities in Britain and Australia have requested information from UBS after the Swiss bank agreed in August to disclose some 4,450 client names to settle a U.S. tax case, the bank confirmed on Sunday, Reuters reported. UBS said in a note to its third-quarter financial statement, published last week, that tax and regulatory authorities in a number of jurisdictions had requested information on cross-border wealth management services provided by UBS and other banks.

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner clashed over potential taxes on bank transactions at a weekend meeting here of finance policy makers from the Group of 20 leading economies, The Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K.'s Mr. Brown surprised many attendees by throwing his weight behind the idea of levying a tax on financial transactions and using those funds to pay for future bank bailouts. Germany and France reaffirmed their support for such a tax. Mr. Geithner made plain that the U.S. wouldn't support a bank-transaction tax.