Volvo AB’s bus unit will improve its production system to boost profitability, which has lagged behind that of the company’s truck and construction equipment divisions for years, the head of the business said. “We have work ahead of us to strengthen our profitability,” Per Carlson, 51, said Aug. 31 in a phone interview. “It’s our conviction and our ambition” that the bus operations will be as profitable as the other divisions, he said. Olof Persson, who became Volvo’s chief executive officer a y

DETROIT (AP) -- Americans likely ignored discouraging economic news and headed into car showrooms last month, drawn by model-year closeouts and appealing new cars. Analysts are predicting sales of more than 1.2 million vehicles for August, up around 20 percent from a year earlier. The annual pace is expected to reach 14.2 million to 14.5 million vehicles, making August the second-best month of the year. Automakers report sales figures throughout the day on Tuesday. The numbers will likely show t

NEW YORK (AFP) -- Moody‘s on Monday lowered the European Union’s long-term issuer rating outlook from stable to negative, saying the move reflected the negative outlooks of the bloc‘s key budget contributors.“It is reasonable to assume that the EU’s creditworthiness should move in line with the creditworthiness of its strongest key member states,” it said, citing negative outlooks for Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands.Moody‘s maintained the EU’s “AAA” rating, saying its “two key ratio

Moody's on Monday lowered the European Union's long-term issuer rating outlook from stable to negative, saying the move reflected the negative outlooks of the bloc's key budget contributors."It is reasonable to assume that the EU's creditworthiness should move in line with the creditworthiness of its strongest key member states," it said, citing negative outlooks for Britain, France, Germany and t

LONDON (AFP) ― The new boss of British lender Barclays wants to shrink its investment bank division as he seeks to move on from rate-rigging and mis-selling scandals, he indicated in an interview published on Sunday.Chief executive Antony Jenkins told The Sunday Times newspaper that there was “no doubt” that tough banking sector regulations would “make some activities in investment banking difficult to make an adequate return on.”He added that profits would be hit by British plans to force banks

MOSCOW (AFP) ― Russian leaders hailed their powerful energy industry on Sunday as the country posted a post-Soviet record high rate of oil production that should boost coffers in uncertain global economic times.The energy ministry said private and state companies extracted a combined 10.38 million barrels per day in August ― only a slight increase over July but higher than any figure seen in the past two decades.Nearly a quarter of the oil was produced by the government’s expanding Rosneft unit

BLED, Slovenia (AFP) ― OECD chief Angel Gurria on Sunday urged the European Central Bank to give a credible signal to markets and resume bond-buying to help debt-wracked Italy and Spain as soon as possible.“I think that the ECB is the bazooka, the firepower, the muscle, the one that has the capacity to impress upon the markets and say: yes we will,” Gurria told journalists on the sidelines of a conference in Slovenia’s lakeside resort of Bled.Asked whether the ECB should buy Italian and Spanish

FRANKFURT (AFP) -- Tempers may well fray at the European Central Bank‘s policy meeting this week as president Mario Draghi seeks to head off German-led resistance to the bank’s anti-crisis armoury.As financial markets look to the ECB to come to the eurozone‘s rescue yet again in the seemingly never-ending debt crisis, the meeting could see a face-off between Draghi and the head of Germany’s Bundesbank, Jens Weidmann.The German central bank chief has made no bones about his opposition to a bond-b