Tokyo - Nissan Motor Co sharply cut its earnings forecast for the full year that runs through March 2009 on the yen's rise and slow overseas sales, the company said Friday.

Japan's third-largest automaker lowered its net profit projection by 53 per cent to 160 billion yen for the full year from an initial forecast.

Nissan halved an operating profit forecast at 270 billion yen for the full year and lowered sales by 7.2 per cent to 9.6 trillion yen.

For the second quarter through September, the automaker saw its net profit fall 38.8 per cent to 73.5 billion yen from a year before.

It was recently made official that the Indian arm of Japanese auto major Toyota Motor Corporation would be launching a global small car by 2010-11. The car would also be exported to overseas markets in both developed and developing countries, other than being launched in the domestic market. 

This strategy adopted by Toyota is quite similar to other auto majors. The main motive of all these companies is widening their market share tremendously through the launches of their own small cars. 

Tokyo - Mitsubishi Motors Corp on Thursday lowered its earnings forecast for the fiscal year that ends on March 31 because of slow auto sales and the yen's recent rise against other major currencies.

The Japanese automaker dropped its operating profit projection to 50 billion yen (514 million dollars) from an initial 60 billion yen. Such profits would represent a 54-per-cent drop from last year.

The company also cut sales for the full year as the global financial crisis roils credit and stock markets and has sent sales down.

Frankfurt - Luxury carmaker Porsche released some of the price pressure on Volkswagen stock Wednesday, announcing in Stuttgart it would unwind futures contracts on up to 5 per cent of Volkswagen AG voting stock.

At the same time it affirmed its ultimate intention to buy "up to 75 per cent" of Volkswagen, Europe's biggest carmaker.

The extraordinary tripling in the Volkswagen price in the space of Monday and Tuesday caught out many hedge funds who were forced to pay vast amounts for the scarce stock to settle short-selling deals.

Detroit - Sales volumes at General Motors continued to drop rapidly in the first nine months of 2008, the ailing carmaker reported Wednesday.

The company reported sales of 6.66 million vehicles, almost 6 per cent less than during the same period last year. In the third quarter alone, the company's sales fell by 
11.4 per cent to 2.11 units.

GM, recently lost its title as the world's leading carmaker to Toyota, which is also battling with declining demand. Its sales fell 4 per cent in the last quarter to 2.23 million units.

Brussels - The European Union's top industry official threw his weight Wednesday behind a call to give the bloc's carmakers cheap loans worth up to 40 billion euros 
(51 billion dollars) to develop eco-friendly cars through the financial crisis.

"We are in a situation where it is getting harder for big European businesses to get credit. We must make sure the higher costs they face to develop climate-friendly cars should also be financed," EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said after talks in Brussels with European automotive industry representatives.

"It is not a question of hand-outs, it's a question of the European Investment Bank making available a low-interest credit programme," he said.