The Financial Services Institute of Australia says an $8 billion fraud at France's second biggest bank would have been driven by a desire for performance rather than greed.

Tiffany & Co. announced that its third-quarter earnings more than tripled, thanks to strong sales growth and a hefty gain on the sale and leaseback of its Tokyo flagship store. It also raised its earnings guidance for the full year.

The Yukos oil firm has formally ceased to exist following the completion of the company's liquidation process, the Yukos bankruptcy administrator said on Thursday in Moscow.

US investors have waded back into the share market, cheered by developments on a number of fronts. There has been a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit result from retail leader, Wal-Mart.

IBM Corp. announced Monday that it planned to buy Cognos Inc. for $5 billion (EUR3.41 billion) in cash in an evident attempt to keep pace with rivals in the field of "business intelligence" software.

The British publisher Emap PLC is reviewing the business in a process and said that may result in the sale or demerger of some parts of the company.

BMW AG saw its sales up 13.2 percent compared with last year, the company said Thursday. The Munich-based company, whose brands include BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce, sold 123,304 cars, compared with 108,897 in October 2006.

Volkswagen AG’s luxury arm Audi AG said Thursday that its global sales worldwide increased 5.3 percent in October compared with last year.

Higher sales and benefits from a restructuring program initiated last year helped Revlon Inc. to narrow its third-quarter loss.

The Chinese energy company PetroChina has become the world's largest company by market value after its trading debut on the Shanghai Stock Exchange Monday. Kate Woodsome explains from VOA's Asia News Center in Hong Kong how a company that earns less than comparable operations has become so valuable.

Internet juggernauts Google and MySpace are teaming up to take on social networking site Facebook. MySpace today agreed to join OpenSocial, a new Google platform designed to allow developers build applications that will work on any website.

Merrill Lynch has ousted chairman and chief executive Stan O'Neal, just days after reporting the biggest quarterly loss in the company's history.