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UPDATE 1-Coca-Cola quarterly profit rises

Oct 18 (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co reported higher quarterly earnings on Tuesday, helped by sales increases in North America and internationally.The world's largest soft-drink maker, whose brands range from Sprite to Minute Maid and Powerade, said net income was $2.22 billion, or 95 cents per share, in the third quarter, up from $2.06 billion, or 88 cents per share, a year earlier.Excluding items, earnings were $1.03 per share.Revenue jumped 45 percent to $12.25 billion.

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El Paso CEO to get $95 million in exit pay - WSJ

CEO Foshee is eligible to receive $95 million as his exit package, if he leaves within two years of an acquisition, the media report said, citing its calculations from a regulatory filing.About $69 million, would come from 4.27 million stock options granted over his eight-year tenure at El Paso, the report said.El Paso Corp and Kinder Morgan Inc were not immediately available for comment.

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Venezuela’s embarrassment of riches — oil

Today’s special report, “Pension fund scandal shakes up Venezuelan oil giant,” examines state oil company PDVSA and the problems it has exploiting what are said by OPEC to be the world’s largest known reserves of crude oil. At the heart of the latest scandal is a Connecticut hedge fund manager named Francisco Illarramendi who has pleaded guilty to multiple counts of wire fraud, securities and investment advisor fraud. Prosecutors say he ran a Ponzi scheme that lost up to half a billion dollars, most of it money that had been entrusted to Illarramendi by PDVSA’s pension fund. Check out this interactive graphic which shows how Venezuela has taken the top spot in terms of world oil reserves. This one shows how despite rising estimates of the country’s reserves, PDVSA’s production has actually declined in the decade since Chavez came to power.

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Venezuela’s embarrassment of riches — oil

Today’s special report, “Pension fund scandal shakes up Venezuelan oil giant,” examines state oil company PDVSA and the problems it has exploiting what are said by OPEC to be the world’s largest known reserves of crude oil. At the heart of the latest scandal is a Connecticut hedge fund manager named Francisco Illarramendi who has pleaded guilty to multiple counts of wire fraud, securities and investment advisor fraud. Prosecutors say he ran a Ponzi scheme that lost up to half a billion dollars, most of it money that had been entrusted to Illarramendi by PDVSA’s pension fund. Check out this interactive graphic which shows how Venezuela has taken the top spot in terms of world oil reserves. This one shows how despite rising estimates of the country’s reserves, PDVSA’s production has actually declined in the decade since Chavez came to power.

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WRAPUP 2-US rejects plan to strengthen IMF in euro zone crisis

* Euro crisis wipes all else off agenda* Communique, closing news conference expected by 1500 GMT* German finmin confident about crisis action plan for Oct. 23 EU summit* BRICS favour boosting IMF capital; U.S., others opposedBy Abhijit Neogy and Glenn SomervillePARIS, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Proposals to double the size of the IMF as part of a broader international response to Europe's debt crisis ran into resistance from the United States and others, burying the idea for now and putting the onus firmly back on Europe.The outlines of the plan that had the backing of several developing economies emerged as G20 finance ministers and central bankers met in Paris to discuss a world economy under threat from European nations mired in debt.A second day of talks on Saturday may produce more robust language on the urgency of tackling the euro zone debt crisis but little of substance is likely to be inked in with an EU summit in nine day's time the make-or-break moment.A communique and round of closing news conferences are expected around 1500 GMT with other decisions set up for a G20 leaders' summit in Cannes on Nov. 3/4.One G20 source said emerging market policymakers backed injecting some $350 billion into the International Monetary Fund.U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his Canadian counterpart poured cold water on the idea. The IMF's dominant shareholders, including the United States, Japan, Germany and China, are content that the fund's $380 billion worth of resources is enough."They (the IMF) have very substantial resources that are uncommitted," Geithner said.German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble agreed the euro zone debt crisis was for Europe to solve, and expressed confidence that EU leaders would produce a plan at the Oct. 23 summit that would be convincing for financial markets.The United States is among countries keen to keep pressure on the Europeans to act more decisively to end the two-year-old debt crisis that began in Greece but has since spread to Ireland and Portugal and is lapping at Spain and Italy."The first priority here is for Europeans to put their own house in order," Australian finance minister Wayne Swan said, though his office in Canberra later released a transcript of a CNN interview in which he added that the G20 should be willing to support extra IMF resourcing if required.Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty also said the G20 should keep up pressure on the euro zone on its "arduous" journey towards a solution and not focus on IMF resources.If minds needed concentrating further, Standard and Poor's cut Spain's long-term credit rating, citing the country's high unemployment, tightening credit and high private sector debt, highlighting the risk of a much larger economy than Greece coming under threat.French and German officials are trying to put flesh on the bones of a crisis resolution plan in time for the European Union summit.Fears about the damage a default by Greece -- and possibly others -- could inflict on the financial system have driven a confidence-sapping bout of market volatility since late July, with global stocks falling 17 percent from their 2011 high in May.DIVISIONUnlike in 2009 when the G20 launched coordinated stimulus to pull the world out of crisis, the rest of the world is chafing at Europe's slow response while Washington and Beijing are sparring over the yuan currency.The Franco-German crisis plan is likely to ask banks to accept bigger losses on their Greek debt than the 21 percent spelled out in a July plan for a second bailout of Athens, which now looks insufficient."It will be more, that's more or less certain," French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said.It should also lay out a system for recapitalising banks and plans to leverage the euro zone's 440 billion euros European Financial Stability Facility to give it more punch.Schaeuble said European banks should be helped, if necessary, with state means to strengthen their capital.Whilst the EFSF has the resources to cope with bailouts for Greece, Portugal and Ireland, it would be overwhelmed by the need to rescue a bigger economy such as Italy or Spain.The most effective method would be to turn the EFSF into a bank so it could draw on European Central Bank resources. Both Germany and the ECB are opposed to that. Attention has turned to the idea of making the fund more like an insurer.For example, if the EFSF covered the first 20 percent of losses a bank could suffer in case of a default -- it could multiply its firepower fivefold to over 2 trillion euros.ROLE OF IMFG20 sources said most BRICS economies were in favour of bolstering the IMF's capital as a crisis-fighting tool."We have said this before and have conveyed this again, that if emerging economies and the BRICS are called upon to contribute, we can do it via the International Monetary Fund," one of the sources said. "India is open to it, China and Brazil are also okay with the idea."Another G20 source said the IMF would present a plan which had broad support to its executive board to make short-term credit lines available to fundamentally healthy countries hit by liquidity crises. It could aid euro zone countries hit by the current crisis of confidence in the bloc's sovereign debt.Any real progress on bigger goals such as setting parameters to measure global imbalances and reining in speculative capital flows is unlikely to come before a Nov. 3-4 summit in Cannes, where France passes the G20 baton to Mexico.A French finance ministry source said that for Cannes, France hoped to have two or three measures agreed for countries showing imbalances: consolidation measures for those with high deficits and stimulus measures for those with surpluses."We are going to try to make some progress and obtain, perhaps not tomorrow or Saturday but by Cannes, a list of measures country by country," he said. "These must be measures which will have an impact on the real economy."A separate G20 source said after preparatory talks late on Thursday that China would commit to boost its consumption through a five-year plan, via households and companies as well as infrastructure.The G20 countries make up 85 percent of global output.An April G20 meeting placed seven large economies under review -- the debt-burdened United States, export driven China and the economies of France, Britain, Germany, Japan and India. Officials have said privately the aim was to get Beijing to discuss the yuan, and China's cooperation is essential to the success of the process.A G20 official said China would not commit to a quick liberalisation of its yuan currency to help rebalance global growth, but would offer to use expansionary fiscal policy to fuel domestic demand."No, they were pretty firm on that -- there will be no progress," the official said.

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UPDATE 1-U.S. judge says Samsung tablets do infringe Apple

Apple sued Samsung in the United States in April, saying the South Korean firm's Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets "slavishly" copies the iPhone and iPad.Apple then filed a request in July to bar some Samsung products from U.S. sale, including the Galaxy S 4G smartphone and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet.The hearing on Thursday centered on this request from Apple for an injunction. Apple must show that Samsung both infringed its patents, and that its patents are valid under the law.Koh on Thursday also said she would deny Apple's request for an injunction based on one of Apple's so-called "utility" patents.She did not say whether she would grant the injunction based on three other so-called Apple "design" patents.

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UPDATE 1-Volvo Bus to double annual capacity by 2015

* To double global annual capacity to 30,000 units by 2015BANGALORE, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Volvo Bus Corp, part of Swedish truckmaker Volvo AB (VOLVb.ST), expects to double its annual manufacturing capacity by 2015, as it ramps up its presence in Asia, its chief executive told reporters on Thursday.The company expects European and North American markets to remain weak and is depending heavily on the Asian market to drive growth.Volvo Bus plans to increase its global manufacturing capacity to 30,000 units a year, from 15,000 units -- half of which will be made in Asia.The company, which is looking to make India a manufacturing and product development hub, plans to invest 4 billion rupees ($81.7 million) in the country in the next 5 years, CEO Hakan Karlsson told a news conference in the southern Indian city of Bangalore.The company's India unit expects revenue growth of 25-30 percent in 2012 from the 7-8 billion rupees expected this year.

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India’s rich, richer than the French. Its poor, much poorer

By Annie Banerji As India’s politicians struggle to manage an outcry over the definition of poverty — does earning more than $0.65 a day really mean you are not poor? — a new report shows the country’s rich doing very nicely from fast economic growth. Rubbing shoulders with Singapore and Hong Kong, India appears in the top five countries where the affluent now have more than $1 million investable assets on average, according to the Global Affluent Investor study conducted by research company TNS. “India and China have already surpassed major European markets like Germany and France. It’s interesting to see that the entrepreneurial spirit of people in these markets is already paying off in terms of personal wealth,” Reg van Steen, Director of Business and Finance, TNS, said. But the report points to an important difference between the emerging Asian powers and their Western peers — wealth distribution. “While 27% of the US are affluent this falls to around 1% in India and China,” the report said. It defined households with more than $100,000 of investable assets as affluent. It will take some time for the number of rich in India and China to catch up with the U.S. — where the report found 31 million affluent households, 10 times as many as India and China each have. “It is necessary perhaps to think in a different way, and to see that a country like India, like Schrödinger’s cat, exists in at least two forms simultaneously: rich and poor,” wrote British historian Patrick French. Poverty looms large over the majority of the 1.2 billion population of the world’s largest democracy, where hundreds of millions continue to live below the bread line. A couple of weeks ago, the government was hit by a storm of criticism for setting the poverty line at 32 rupees ($0.65) per day. The benchmark — barely enough to buy a return ticket on New Delhi’s subway — is used to gauge who gets subsidies in a country where malnutrition rates in some states are worse than sub-Saharan Africa. Outcry from the opposition, economists and the media forced the government to say the controversial rate would not be used to decide who has access to welfare programmes. Two decades of fast growth have brought huge changes to India, but there are growing calls for the boom to be put to better use. “While economic growth is an important boon for enhancing living conditions, its reach depends greatly on what we do with the fruits of growth,” economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen wrote in an article in February.