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.

German and Russian leaders seethed and unions tore up a deal to cut costs in protest at General Motors' "completely unacceptable" decision to keep Opel, its European unit, after months of talks, Reuters reported. Labor leader Klaus Franz rescinded hundreds of millions of euros in cost concessions that workers agreed to on condition that Opel was bought by Magna, the Russian-backed Canadian group long backed as buyer by Berlin and Moscow.

General Motors Co.'s board of directors will get one more chance to alter the auto maker's course in relation to its Opel and Vauxhall operations in Europe when it meets for its fourth formal meeting on the matter Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The auto maker's board, formed in July after GM exited bankruptcy court, will be asked by the company's management team to approve the contents of a letter drafted in mid-October to address the European Union's concerns related to the sale of 55% of Opel to automotive supplier Magna International Inc.

BMW has become the first major company in Germany to change its compensation practices amid growing concern over excessive banker bonuses, Spiegel Online reported. The company cited a fairer work environment as its reason. Other firms are sure to take notice, given BMW's size and weight in the global business market. BMW plans to tie executive bonuses to those of its blue-collar workers, in a bid to create a fairer and sustainable compensation environment within the company.