Volkswagen Car Sales Drop 20% In UK After Scandal.

Volkswagen car sales in Britain dropped by almost 20 percent in November compared with a year earlier as the company's emissions testing scandal took a toll.

There were 12,958 Volkswagen registrations last month in the U.K., compared to 16,196 in November 2014, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said Friday.

Because overall auto sales rose by 3.8 percent, that saw Volkswagen's market share in Britain drop to 7.2 percent from 9.4 percent a year earlier. Other Volkswagen Group marques, such as SEAT, Skoda and Porsche, also suffered drops in U.K. sales.

The drop in sales was similar to the 25 percent slump reported in the United States, the epicenter of Volkswagen's scandal. The company, which rivals Toyota for the title as world's largest car maker, admitted in September that its diesel vehicles had cheated on U.S. emissions tests.

The sales numbers for November are closely watched in part because of a lag of several weeks between the time a car is purchased and registered. The month's figures for the wider European Union are due on Dec. 15.

Volkswagen says it had installed the cheating software in 11 million cars globally.

It admitted that 482,000 two-liter and 85,000 six-cylinder diesel vehicles in the U.S. contained the software. In Europe, about 8.5 million cars have it, though there is no confirmation the cars cheated on European tests.

Volkswagen has set aside 6.7 billion euros ($7.2 billion) to cover the cost of fixing the cars, but experts say the scandal will cost the company much more, in part through lost sales.

By: AP (London).

South Africa's Naspers launches $2.5 bln accelerated bookbuild for M&A.

South African e-commerce and media group Naspers plans to sell 17.1 million new shares in an accelerated bookbuild to raise $2.5 billion to fund acquisitions, it said on Thursday.

Part of the money raised would be used to fund its $1.2 billion acquisition of an additional stake in Russian online classified business Avito, in which Naspers is increasing its stake to 68 percent from 17.4 percent.

The price of the new shares will be determined during the bookbuilding process to be conducted by Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, the company said.

Accelerated bookbuilds, whereby investment banks sell shares quickly in one or two days, are typically run at a discount to a company's stock price.

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Africa's largest company by market value, Naspers has transformed itself from an apartheid-era publisher into a $60 billion Internet powerhouse by focusing on e-commerce in emerging markets.

It has operations in more than 130 countries and owns stakes in Russian Internet group Mail.Ru Group and China's biggest social network and online entertainment firm Tencent Holdings.

By: Reuters.

Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records. 

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