Two private equity-owned U.S. retailers, discounter Dollar General Corp (DG) and youth apparel chain rue21 Inc (RUE) rose in their trading debuts on Friday, in performances that will soothe worries that investor appetite for buyout-backed initial public offerings has waned.

Shares of Dollar General rose as much as 10 percent on the New York Stock Exchange, while rue21 leaped as high as 28.4 percent on the Nasdaq, putting it on pace for one of the biggest first-day jumps of an IPO this year.

In afternoon trade, Dollar General shares were quoted for $22.77 or up 8.4 percent, while rue21 was up 28.4 percent, trading at $24.40.

Toyota Motor Corp's (TM) surprise quarterly profit and halving of its annual loss forecast failed to convince investors the world's No.1 carmaker is back on track, as government subsidies peter out and a strong yen takes its toll.

Major Japanese automakers have raised their forecasts for the year to March 2010 as they squeeze out savings and government incentives from Germany to China, the U.S. and Japan prop demand through the worst economic crisis in generations.

Kraft Foods Inc, which posted weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue and cut its full-year sales forecast on Tuesday, said it would not overpay for British chocolatier Cadbury Plc.

Investors in both companies had hoped strong quarterly results would bolster the value of Kraft's initial $16.7 billion cash and stock proposal, but shares in the maker of Velveeta cheese and Oreo cookies fell 3 percent.

"Clearly there has been a lot of speculation about what we can afford given these parameters, but as we said before, what we can afford is not relevant," Kraft Chief Executive Irene Rosenfeld said on a conference call. "What is relevant is what Cadbury is worth, and that will guide our actions going forward."

The board of General Motors Co has opted to keep Opel, undoing months of painstaking negotiations to sell the European unit to a Russian-backed group led by Canada's Magna.

GM confirmed the decision made by its 13-member board after a meeting of directors on Tuesday in Detroit, saying that improving business conditions and the strategic importance of Opel to its operations had prompted the decision.

"GM will soon present its restructuring plan to Germany and other governments and hopes for its favorable consideration," GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson said in a statement.

U.S. auto sales in October are expected to provide more evidence that the worst of the industry's four-year downturn has passed, while leaving open doubts about the speed and strength of the recovery.

Analysts and executives expect U.S. auto sales will be above 10 million vehicles on the annualized basis tracked by the industry.

JPMorgan Chase & Co raised concerns about Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam and his associates as far back as 2001, the Financial Times reported, citing an internal company document seen by the newspaper.

Rajaratnam, 52, was arrested on October 16 along with five others in what prosecutors described as the biggest hedge fund insider trading case ever.

The 2001 note, written by an analyst at the bank's alternative asset management arm, said the unit "should reduce our allocation" in Galleon's technology fund, pointing to what it described as "more negative news about Raj and his cohorts," the Financial Times reported.

The United States, which posted a record deficit in the last fiscal year, may lose its Aaa-rating if it does not reduce the gap to manageable levels in the next 3-4 years, Moody's Investors Service said on Thursday.

The U.S. government posted a deficit of $1.417 trillion in the year ended September 30 as the deep recession and a series of bank rescues cut a gaping hole in its public finances. The White House has forecast deficits of more than $1 trillion through fiscal 2011.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) on Thursday raised its full-year outlook and reported higher-than-expected quarterly profit as its growing focus on higher-margin software and services businesses helped it cope with weak technology spending.

International Business Machines Corp said it expects full-year earnings of at least $9.85 per share, up from its previous outlook of at least $9.70 a share.

IBM reported its third-quarter net profit rose to $3.2 billion, or $2.40 a share, from $2.8 billion, or $2.04 a share, a year earlier. Analysts on average expected a profit of $2.38 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) posted its strongest sequential revenue growth in more than a year, outpacing Wall Street expectations as the Internet search advertising business showed signs of recovery from the global recession.

Shares of Google, which have risen nearly 15 percent in recent weeks, rose 2.1 percent.

The world's No. 1 search engine said sales in the third quarter totaled $5.94 billion, up from $5.52 billion in the second quarter and $5.54 billion in the year-earlier period.

Big oil producing nations denied a British newspaper report on Tuesday that Gulf Arab states were in secret talks with Russia, China, Japan and France to replace the U.S. dollar with a basket of currencies in trading oil.

The dollar eased in response to the report, which was written by The Independent's Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk and cited unidentified sources in Gulf Arab states and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong.