Continental AG

• Asian stocks rise, led by carmakers, banks; Copper gains, bond risk falls.
• Australian retail sales rose 1.8% in November - the most in eight months.
• China’s central bank said it will target “moderate” loan growth in 2010.
• Dollar near 3-week low on signs global rebound gaining momentum.
• Oil pulls back below $83 in Asia after cold weather sparks 20 percent rally since December.
• Spot iron ore delivered to China rose to the highest in more than a year amid “panic buying” by steel mills.

• Asian currencies advance for a seventh week as growth, yields draws funds.
• Asian stocks fell as losses at Casio, Yaskawa Electric spook expectations of recovery.
• Business-Jet demand likely to skid before recovering: Honeywell Intl.
• China’s economy grew by over 7% in the first nine months of the year: Govt official.
• China's regulator urged 5 biggest state lenders to maintain a 'reasonable pace' of lending.
• China's growth exceeds 7 pct in January-September, will easily hit 8 percent target.

• The best unknown activist investment of 2009 (Greenbackd)
• Words from the wise (Financial Armageddon)
• CME in talks to buy CBOE for $5 billion (Bloomberg)
• UBS warned U.S. customers by registered mail their account details may be given to U.S. tax authorities (Reuters)
• Goldman can spare you a dime (NYT)
• The extinction of ethics in finance - The Fallout (Reality Arbiter)

• Alcatel-Lucent swung to a net profit of €14M ($19.6M) vs. a year-ago loss of €1.1B.
• Ambac Fincl expects Q2 impairment losses on credit derivatives to rise by ~$1.6B to $4.9B.
• BAE Systems swung to 1H loss of $134M; revs jump 28%.
• British American Tobacco H1 profit up 16 pct to 1.45 billion pounds.
• British Sky Broadcasting posts a solid fourth-quarter net profit.

Developing story, but with such blockbusters as Lyondell and Continental AG one had to expect they would pull the plug sooner or later.

We were half joking when we said 2 days ago that 2nd largest auto-supplier in Europe Schaeffler-Continental may go bankrupt.

In what could go down as the sad conclusion to the dumbest acquisition of all time, ball-bearing maker Schaeffler, which acquired Europe's second-largest auto-supplier Continental AG, has said in an e-mailed statement that it is seeking an investor, after being saddled with $14 billion of debt as part of the acquisition.