Italian automaker Fiat SpA is still interested in Germany's Opel despite losing a bid to take over the General Motors Corp unit, Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said on Friday, Reuters reported. Fiat lost out last week to Canadian car parts maker Magna International Inc in a bid for Opel, but Marchionne's comments suggested Fiat might yet be a factor in the deal. "The deal technically is not closed, we will see," Marchionne said, adding that Fiat had not yet used a €1 billion ($1.42 billion) line of credit from banks.

General Motors Corp. sold more cars in Britain than anywhere else in Europe last year. But it was Germany, and not Britain, that agreed to rescue GM’s European Opel unit with bridge loans last week to ease a sale to Magna International Inc. Prime Minister Gordon Brown hasn’t committed money to a bailout, raising concern U.K. employees will be cut after the deal as more Germans are spared. Opel sold almost 350,000 vehicles in the U.K. last year under the Vauxhall brand, the No. 2 seller in the market behind Ford Motor Co.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, opening the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, said on Friday the global economy had avoided the worst but warned participants it was too early to celebrate recovery, Reuters reported. The global financial crisis has hit Russia harder than any other big emerging market but Medvedev said in generally sober remarks that the country had stabilized its financial system and followed appropriate policies.

The Chinese government’s largest investment ever in a Western company, a proposed $19.5 billion stake in the Australian-British mining giant Rio Tinto Group, collapsed early Friday, dealing a blow both to China’s global corporate ambitions and to its efforts to gain clout in the natural resources market, The New York Times reported. The board of Rio Tinto announced the decision after meeting in London on Thursday, saying the company had ended the deal it struck in February to sell the stake to China’s state-owned Aluminum Corporation of China, also known as Chinalco.

India's biggest energy group, Reliance Industries Ltd, said on Wednesday a European textile unit, Trevira, had applied in a German court to start of insolvency proceedings with a restructuring plan, Reuters reported. "The move follows major efforts by the company to overcome the impact of industrial slowdown in Europe particularly of the automotive and textile sectors to whom it is an important supplier," Reliance, India's most valuable listed firm, said in a statement. Trevira makes polyester fibres and filament yarns, and reported turnover of €323 million ($459 million) in 2008.

A failed Latvian government debt auction on Wednesday sent tremors across financial markets as investors feared that emerging nations round the world would struggle to find buyers for a huge wave of sovereign debt issuance, the Financial Times reported. The auction failure revived concerns about the economies of central and eastern Europe and triggered a sell-off in the shares of Swedish banks, which have invested heavily in the Baltic nation. The currencies of several east European countries fell sharply against the dollar.

Germany heaved a sigh of relief on Saturday over a deal with Canadian auto parts group Magna, General Motors and the U.S. government to save carmaker Opel from the imminent bankruptcy of its U.S. parent, Reuters reported. The accord sealed after six hours of talks in Chancellor Angela Merkel's offices still needs final approval but seemed set to ringfence Opel and its 50,000 workers in Europe from a GM Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing widely expected for Monday. Merkel said U.S. President Barack Obama--due to visit Germany next week--helped swing the deal with a telephone call on Friday.

Magna, the Canadian car parts maker, and Sberbank, Russia’s biggest state-controlled bank, are poised to become the new shared owners of Vauxhall, the Times Online reported. It is believed that Magna, Sberbank, which is backed by Oleg Deripaska, the Russian aluminium tycoon, and General Motors (GM), the American carmaker, have signed a memorandum of understanding in Germany broadly agreeing to undisclosed terms to carve up the ownership of Vauxhall and Opel between them.

Shares in British banks fell on Thursday after it emerged that the economic assumptions used to test whether some of the biggest institutions could withstand a deep recession may have been less severe than assumed in financial markets, the Financial Times reported. The Financial Services Authority, the City of London watchdog, published details of the worst-case economic scenarios used to test the capital strength of banks including Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and Lloyds.

London or Paris may become the hub for the resolution of dozens of lawsuits related to banks’ and investment funds’ exposure to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, Luxembourg’s Treasury and Budget Minister Luc Frieden said. The nation’s courts have dealt with more than 20 lawsuits and will get hundreds more in the coming months from investors seeking compensation from banks, funds and auditors for losses.