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President Nicolas Sarkozy unveiled his long-awaited rescue plan for the French motor industry. In exchange for some €6bn ($7.8bn) of loans, Peugeot-Citroen and Renault have promised not to cut jobs or shut down factories in France.

I can receive a tempting severance package if I stay with my current employer but I also have managed to land myself better work. Which do I choose?

The head brewer of Guinness beer also produced an important economic tool: the t-test, which determines an experiment’s statistical significance, writes Tim Harford

A spying scandal and cancelled projects because of the global financial crisis are proving a headache for Hartmut Mehdom, Deutsche Bahn’s pugnacious chief executive

Wednesday’s rejection of the appeal against France’s cancelling Orange and Apple’s iPhone agreement risks turning into a Pyrrhic victory for the mobile operator’s domestic competitors

The German government is now thinking of introducing a more conventional and politically workable scheme of allowing individual banks to set up their own units for toxic assets

Ben Verwaayen, head of the Franco-American telecoms equipment maker, could use the crisis to transform the group by focusing on its traditional core business – fixed-line – and by turning it into a leader in systems integration

Ben Verwaayen, head of the Franco-American telecoms equipment maker, could use the crisis to transform the group by focusing on its traditional core business – fixed-line – and by turning it into a leader in systems integration

He got accepted to a university in London and broke up with me, arguing he wasn’t prepared to carry the responsibility of me leaving a life behind to go after him

Studies show that earlier experiences with economic booms and busts seem to shape a person’s subsequent investment behaviour, writes Tim Harford

Scale will matter in mature markets and, after the job cuts, it may be that these Continental champions will have to think about finding new allies if they want to stay in the game

Santander’s offer to repay thousands of its wealthiest private clients stung by the Madoff scandal looks more like a calculated , let alone an acknowledgement of guilt

Woody Allen’s definition of a stockbroker is someone who invests your money until it’s all gone. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be behaving in a similar way these days, handing out bundles of tax dollars and tax euros to financially strapped businesses as if they were sitting on a bottomless pit full of cash

With France failing to gain an upper hand over Germany in Airbus, it is turning its attention to its own defence industry, and nuclear power

The true reason we do not give freely is because of an almost unlimited capacity to put out of our minds the suffering of people we will never meet, writes Tim Harford

I like taking women out for first-date dinners and paying for the meal, but I am disappointed when they do not say thank you afterwards. Am I expecting too much?

The former German chancellor once dubbed ‘comrade of the bosses’ is now trusted by both unions and bosses and is involved in a challenging peace mission in Germany

Delays to finalising the strategic alliance between Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild and the Bank of Chinathe deal cqan only presumably be political

Sergio Marchionne, Fiat’s chief executive, laid a particularly strong claim for the top prize in the Financial Times-ArcelorMittal Boldness in Business award by confirming his plans to acquire a 35 per cent stake in Chrysler

President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposal for new rules to make capitalism more ethical and transparent is being tested by Dassault’s creeping control of the defence group

Spikes in testosterone levels are both the cause and the consequence of a risky but profitable day on the trading floor, says Tim Harford

The holidays were interrupted by family arguments over TV programmes, chores, and so on. Can economics prevent such fights from spoiling next Christmas?

France’s state-owned EDF electricity behemoth recently bought British Energy to conquer the new UK market for nuclear plants. This week, EDF’s two big German rivals – Eon and RWE – have established a joint venture to pool their resources to provide nuclear plants to the promising UK market and thus directly challenge EDF

The German federal government has been the most active in promoting consolidation in both the commercial banking industry as well as in the state banking sector, albeit in a more subtle behind-the-scenes manner

The German federal government has been the most active in promoting consolidation in both the commercial banking industry as well as in the state banking sector, albeit in a more subtle behind-the-scenes manner