Principal content
MAN withdraws €10.3bn bid for Scania
German truckmaker MAN on Tuesday withdrew its €10.3bn hostile bid for Scania, handing Sweden’s powerful Wallenberg family victory in one of Europe’s bitterest recent takeover battles.
Royal criticises Sarkozy tax-cut plan
Socialist calls rival’s promise ‘scandalous’
GdF sets new timescale for Suez merger
Statement follows 6½ hour board meeting
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Alcatel counts cost of Lucent merger
Drop in fourth-quarter earnings forecast
Brussels split over new laws to cut vehicle emissions
Delay of two weeks on agreeing new strategy
Lukoil carves position for itself in oil
Company has invested $3bn in downstream assets
Sterling hits 14-year high against dollar
Market expects further UK rate rise
Citigroup head of wealth management leaves
Worries about “judgement issues”
China confirms missile test
Tokyo says Beijing not sharing information
Lex live
Alcatel-Lucent in trouble
Alcatel and Lucent first began discussing a merger almost six years ago. Has it been worth the wait? Not on the evidence of the combined company’s first set of results since the union formally began in December.
Markets
Fed on ‘perma-pause’?

The “perma-pausers” are in the ascendancy. The US Federal Reserve has left its baseline Fed Funds rate pegged at 5.25 per cent since last July, writes John Authers.
Comment
Why the winner’s curse could hit complex finance

The market suffers from the fact that people overbid for complicated products that they do not understand, writes John Kay.
Business life
Praise the company that stays public, for it does good work

There seems to be a dreadful inevitability about the phenomenon of private equity at the moment. No company’s future can be discussed without the possibility of a private equity bid being raised, writes Stefan Stern