Germany

Amid new signs that the euro-zone economic recovery is gathering headway, Germany continues to prepare for a possible relapse as other governments plot exit strategies, The Wall Street Journal reported. Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday that government-funded programs to keep people employed by reducing work hours have helped prevent broad layoffs in Germany and will be extended. Ms. Merkel told a business conference in Berlin that the length of the extension for short-hour program was is still being discussed.

A senior General Motors Co. executive said Tuesday that the final restructuring plan for GM's Opel/Vauxhall unit still could hinge on aid commitments from European governments, Dow Jones reported. The company aims to advance a new €3.3 billion turnaround plan for the European operation in two to three weeks and wants aid to supplement further investment of its own. Nick Reilly, president of GM's international operations, said there was no "bidding war" among European countries looking to preserve local auto jobs with financial support.

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.

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.

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.

U.S. carmaker General Motors' decision to keep its European unit Opel will benefit European taxpayers, especially in Britain, Germany and Spain, British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson said on Thursday, Reuters reported. He said he believed workers at GM's Vauxhall unit in Britain would prefer to keep the same management rather than have new owners, but gave no details of how the restructuring of the company would be financed.

General Motors Co. executives, rushing to update a restructuring plan for Opel and Vauxhall, are confident they can still win financial backing from Germany despite the rift created when the company's board abruptly abandoned a plan to sell control of the European divisions, The Wall Street Journal reported. John Smith, GM's lead restructuring executive for Opel, said in a conference call Tuesday that the car maker plans to review a new plan "very soon" and then present it to European governments and labor unions.

Germany, second only to China as the world's leading exporter of goods, has been particularly hard-hit by the collapse of global markets. But the mass unemployment some had feared has failed to materialize. Labor experts in many countries are wondering how Germany has done it, Spiegel Online reported. Germany currently has 1.1 million workers participating in short-time working programs, known in German as Kurzarbeit. They include people who don't have enough work, but who also are nevertheless not being let go.