Hours after announcing the departure of chief executive Dan Akerson, the Holden unit of General Motors Co announced its decision to halt its auto making operations in Australia by 2017.

The National Stock Exchange data revealed Heineken International BV today increased its shareholder interest in India's United Breweries for USD45.8 million or INR2.8 billion.

Monsanto Company and Novozymes A/S formed a strategic cooperation called "The BioAg Alliance" in order to capitalize each other's capabilities in microbial technologies and commercial markets.

PaeDae founder and chief executive officer Rob Emrich explained to TechCrunch that it launched a debt-and-equity round instead to be able to obtain a sizeable amount of capital while being able to retain its position as an early acquisition target.

SHIFT, an open marketing cloud provider, recently raised USD6 million in its Series B investment round. The proceeds from the funding round will go towards its international expansion plans.

Dailymotion's acquisition of Jilion was said to be because of the opportunities SublimeVideo's cutting-edge HTML5 video technology platform could provide to the French video-sharing site.

Bart Chilton, member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said the Volcker rule on proprietary trades will most likely take in effect before 2015, as said in a Reuters report.

Reuters heard from five anonymous sources that Norway-based debt collector Lindorff's owners, Swiss Investor AB and private equity firm Altor, had already hired banks to lead the Nordic company's IPO.

Sources disclosed to IFR that Chinese waste management and energy company China Everbright International Ltd will be floating 430 million new shares to raise up to HKD3.75 billion or USD484 million.

Head William Dean Chapman Reston of Virginia-based firm Alexander Capital Markets was found guilty of defrauding its investors including US Representative Alan Grayson of more than USD35 million in a loan scheme, Reuters said in a report.

Volvo AB has entered into a definitive agreement to divest its construction-equipment rental business Volvo Rents to Platinum Equity in a SEK7.2 billion or USD1.1 billion debt sale deal.

Major banks on Wall Street are extremely anxious about the threat of the final deliberations of the Volcker rule, of which its provisions regarding the definition and exemption of market-making is set to be deliberated soon.

Despite the discount of costs to run hedge funds in the Asian-Pacific region, Citigroup Inc's recent survey revealed that not all hedge funds in the region are successes in expanding its assets and achieving profitability.

Sources noted that Nokia Oyj is in danger of finding a new buyer for its mobile handset business if it failed to lift the freeze on its Indian assets to be able to transfer them to Microsoft as part of its acquisition agreement.

The rising commercial property prices in London has prompted institutional investors to team up with commercial property developers in the UK to capitalize on the recovery of the market in UK.

HealthLoop, a maker of an automated patient health assessment platform, received USD10 million in Series A funding from investors led by Canvas Venture Fund and also participated by Subtraction Capital and other institutional investors.

A press release from Verizon Communications Inc read that it has acquired content delivery network EdgeCast to be consolidated to its Verizon Digital Media Services at an undisclosed amount.

Practice Fusion, maker of the Electronic Health Records (EHR) platform, received an additional USD15 million in Series D funding apart from the USD85 million it raised earlier for the round in September, TechCrunch said in its report.

Food-related companies like Hampton Creek Foods are seeing a rise in financial support from private equity firms and angel investors in the past few months to develop plant-based alternatives to food like eggs.

Bloomberg columnist and money manager Barry Ritholtz said in his column on Bloomberg that the hedge fund industry is saturated with too many funds that are performing fairly and charge high fees in return for their services.

Bloomberg said in its report that nutrition company Herbalife Ltd attempted to destroy activist investor Bill Ackman's credibility after the latter claimed that the former is running a pyramid scheme.

Adobe Systems Inc and other major software providers like Microsoft Corp and SAP had to shift its priority to cloud software after experiencing lackluster sales in their hardware-dependent software products.

China Everbright Bank Co Ltd's USD2.8 billion float on Tuesday follows the steps taken by peers Huishang Bank Corp Ltd (3698.HK) and Bank of Chongqing to prepare a financial buffer against bad loans in the near future, said a Reuters report.

Tightening monetary policy in China has been reduced due to the slowing yearly consumer inflation rate of 3% in November from 3.2% the month before, said a Reuters report.

Dairy products company WhiteWave Foods is set to acquire organic food producer Earthbound Farm from its existing shareholders including founders Drew and Myra Goodman and Kainos Capital for USD600 million.

Tyco International Inc's South Korean security systems unit ADT Caps is reportedly attracting bids from private equity firms including KKR & Co LP and Bain Capital.

As the Volcker rule for banking and trading is being wrapped up by five US government agencies, politicians and advocates of the controversial Glass-Steagall legislation intended to push a revival of a version of its favored banking act should the former fail to curb risky betting by US banks.

Recent data by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission indicated that hedge funds are the least bullish about their bets in gold despite strong US economic data.

A Bloomberg report noted that China's massive CNY2.6 trillion or USD427 billion corporate debt is due next year, indicating a possibility that the country could default on its payments for the first time.

The second fund, which is run by former regional head of New York-based hedge fund Perry Capital LLC Alp Ercil, is targeting to raise USD1.1 billion to invest in distressed assets in Asia.