Germany's economic growth slowed slightly in the third quarter, official statistics published on Friday showed, an expected deceleration after a record second quarter for Europe's top economy.

Gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 0.7 percent between July and September, Germany's statistics office said, after a jump of 2.3 percent in the second quarter of the year, the best performance for 20 years.

The world's biggest rich and emerging powers escalated a war of words over trade and currencies Thursday, as leaders opened a G20 summit struggling to iron out distortions that threaten global growth.

The United States, striving to recover from its worst economic crisis in decades, locked horns anew with exporting giants China and Germany over a plan to rebalance skewed commerce between deficit and surplus countries.

General Motors on Wednesday announced a two-billion-dollar third quarter profit that will help it end the year in the black as it prepares to launch a public stock offering and slowly break away from government ownership.

But the automaker cautioned its fourth quarter results would be "significantly lower," in part due to a 700 million dollar charge related to buying back 2.1 billion dollars in shares from the U.S. government.

British mobile phone giant Vodafone said on Tuesday that first-half net profits soared by 56.5 percent and raised its annual earnings forecast, adding it had agreed to sell SoftBank interests for 3.1 billion pounds.

Earnings after tax soared by 56.5 percent to 7.542 billion pounds (8.764 billion euros, 12.15 billion dollars) in the six months to September, compared with the outcome in the same part of 2009.

Rolls-Royce shares slumped over 3.0 percent in initial trades on Monday after Qantas said it had found oil leaks in engines made by the British group for the Australian airlines' Airbus A380 superjumbos.

Rolls dropped 3.21 percent to 572 pence, making it the heaviest faller in early trading on London's benchmark FTSE 100 index, which was stable.

The United States economy created 151,000 jobs in October, much better than expected amid a weak recovery, while the unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.6 percent for the third consecutive month, official data showed on Friday.

The jobless rate matched expectations, while the number of new jobs was more than double the 60,000 forecast by most analysts.

The world's leading luxury car maker, BMW, reported a huge leap in third-quarter net profit on Wednesday as recovering global markets snapped up its saloons (sedans) and sports utility vehicles.

BMW said its net profit leapt 11-fold from the equivalent figure last year, to 874 million euros (1.2 billion dollars), and stood by its sales target for this year and profitability targets for 2012.

The oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico could cost BP 40 billion dollars, the energy group revealed on Tuesday with shock figures ramping up the bill by almost a quarter.

BP said it had taken an additional charge of 7.7 billion dollars during the third quarter, taking the company's total estimated clean-up and legal costs to 39.9 billion dollars (28.6 billion euros).

Emirates airlines on Monday posted a 351 percent increase in net profits in six months, reaching 3.4 billion dirhams (925 million dollars), on the back of growing customer demand, a statement said.

The Dubai national carrier said the net profits in the first half of its current financial year compared to 752 million dirhams in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Royal Dutch Shell announced Thursday that net profits rose seven percent to 3.463 billion dollars in the third quarter from one year ago, driven by higher output, rising oil prices and lower costs.

However the net profit figure, equivalent to 2.503 billion euros, also included a massive 1.442 billion dollars of impairments and writedowns on the value of assets, Shell said in a results statement.