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LONDON (Dow Jones) -- The outlook for the European auto market isn't, to say the least, stellar. PSA Peugeot Citroen, which is the No. 2 seller of cars in Western Europe, last week said that the region's demand for cars should be flat in 2006 and that there will be aggressive promotional activity. And comments from Volkswagen, Renault and DaimlerChrysler all have pointed in the same directio ...

NEW YORK (Dow Jones) -- With an anticipated $400 million purse, Burger King's upcoming stock offering ranks as the richest U.S. restaurant IPO ever. The home of the Whopper and the world's No. 2 burger chain late Thursday filed documents with U.S regulators for an initial public offering. Its stock-market debut is likely within six months. Shooting for maximum proceeds of $400 million, the I ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones) -- The White House's request for another $72 billion in military spending is set to go to defense contractors that can help rehabilitate a fighting force worn down during more than four years of war. This money is in addition to another $50 billion already set aside as a supplement to the regular defense budget for fiscal year 2006. According to Bear Stearns analyst ...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks turned mixed Friday as the market prepares to wrap up a solid week of gains, with the latest inflation data doing little but confirm that interest rates have further to rise. A drop in crude prices over the week and an upbeat assessment of the economy from new Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke also helped boost positive sentiment. The Dow Jones Indus ...

But some experts say woes are self-inflicted WASHINGTON (Dow Jones) -- America's automakers are being hurt by misguided U.S. trade policy that is enabling an unfair flood of foreign imports into the markets and a drastic disparity in U.S. exports, charged a group of Democratic senators and industry officials on Friday. But other trade experts and economists said that the big U.S. car companies ...

European bourses climbed to fresh 4½ year highs this week, led by by the Paris bourse where the CAC-40 index hit the 5,000 level for the first time since August 2001. // Encouraged by a strong run on Wall Street, the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index gained 0.3 per cent to 1,342.99 on Friday - its highest level for 4½ years. That represented a climb of 1.4 per cent on the week. French blue chips outperfo ...

Government bonds around the globe showed resilience this week in spite of uncertainty about the future direction of interest rates, heavy supply pressures and a flood of economic data from both sides of the Atlantic. // “It’s probably fair to say that we have had a pretty bumper week in terms of news,” said David Brown, chief European economist at Bear Stearns. But he noted that,?in?spite?of?this ...

By Aline van Duyn and James Politi in New YorkPublished: February 17 2006 18:10 | Last updated: February 17 2006 22:38Time Warner and Carl Icahn have agreed to a settlement that will end the activist investor's five-month campaign to seek control and break up the world's biggest media company. In exchange for calling off the attack, Time Warner has offered to increase its share buyback programme to $20bn from $12.5bn, agreed to implement a $1bn company-wide cost-cutting programme and said it wo ...

By Marc Jones LONDON (Reuters) - Healthcare software firm iSoft Group (IOT.L: Quote, Profile, Research) on Friday denied reports that development problems were at fault for delays in delivering software for a massive IT upgrade of Britain's public health service. The rebuttal comes in response to comments in two broker notes and a report in the Financial Times on Thursday in which a senior mana ...

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- European stocks ended at a new four-and-a-half year high Friday on gains for miners and automakers, while the U.K.'s Daily Mail & General Trust tumbled after backtracking on selloff plans. The German DAX Xetra 30 indexrose 0.11% at 5,795, the French CAC 40 indexclimbed 0.54% at 5,000 and the U.K. FTSE 100 indexedged 0.30% higher at 5, 846. The pan-European Dow Jon ...