A survey released on Nov. 5 by The Banker magazine found that assets held by Sharia-compliant banks rose 28.6% in 2009 to $822 billion, while assets held by conventional banks grew only 6.8%.

True, Islamic finance still accounts for only about 1% of the global financial-services market, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But Sharia’s strict rules against speculation, hedging, and off-balance-sheet holdings are attracting investors worldwide. Already, some 50% of clients of Islamic financial institutions are non-Muslim, Anthony O’Sullivan, head of private-sector development at the OECD, said at a Nov. 4 conference in Paris on Islamic financing.

Just look at Renault's financial position. It posted a $4 billion loss in the first-half of the year, with global revenues falling almost 24% to $23.7 billion. That came after the French auto giant reportedly forked out $394 million last season on its Formula One team, according to Formula Money, which tracks the sport's finances.

Faced with such losses, it's easy to see why Renault may balk at paying multi-million dollar sums for a place at motor sport's top table. A high-profile scandal involving Flavio Briatore, Renault's former F1 chief, who ordered one of the team’s drivers to crash on purpose also hasn't helped.

On paper, Merkel’s Christian Democrats, the FDP and the Bavarian Christian Social Union have agreed to an ambitious program following their election victory Sept. 27. At the center are bigger-than-expected tax cuts for businesses and individuals. But UBS Economist Martin Lueck doubts whether Merkel will deliver fully on the tax cuts considering that the nation’s debt is already soaring because of stimulus spending. “The tax cuts are far from carved in stone,” Luecke says in a note to investors.

The new government is also unlikely to tamper with laws that make it hard to dismiss workers. Business has long pined for more flexibility to hire and fire employees, but weaker job protections are highly unpopular even among conservative voters. Merkel has made it clear she doesn’t plan to go there.

Moreover, Darling says, the decision to force RBS and Lloyds to sell branches equating up to 10% of the UK retail banking market will dramatically increase competition, another big win for the British taxpayer.

If anyone deserves credit for what promises to be a massive shakeup of British banking, it's outgoing European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Kroes is determined that Europe's state-funded banks have no advantage over their private sector rivals. Determined to promote competition, the EC has demanded the sale of 318 RBS branches and more than 600 Lloyds outlets over the next four years.

RBS will also sell its NatWest brand in Scotland, RBS Insurance and its card payment business, Global Merchant Services. And Lloyds will also part with its TSB brand in England, Wales and Scotland and mortgage broker Cheltenham & Gloucester, as well as the Intelligent Finance online business.

Lloyds, which is 43.5% government-owned, says it has no plans to join the Government Asset Protection Scheme (GAPS), which provides state insurance for past toxic loans. It will pay the government £2.5 billion ($4.1 billion) to cover the cost of the insurance it has received from the government since February. Instead, Lloyds plans to raise £21 billion ($34 billion), including a £13.5 billon ($22 billion) rights issue and a £7.5 billion ($12 billion) debt swap.

News was brighter from the Korean giants, No. 2-ranked Samsung and No. 3-ranked LG Electronics, both of which saw record handset shipments in the third quarter. But overall, according to data released today by market watchers Strategy Analytics and ABI Research, the cell phone market contracted by 4.4% to 6.5% in the third quarter compared with the same period in 2008. The prognosis for the fourth quarter is somewhat more optimistic: Strategy Analytics forecasts a return to year-over-year growth and ABI figures that sales for the year should end up only 4% to 5% lower than in 2008.

The news for sellers of telecom networks is far darker, though, underscoring that a recovery in consumer spending may be ahead of capex for big telcos. Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) reported disappointing results on Oct. 30, and its stock was hammered, falling 11.5% in New York trading. The Franco-American telecom equipment and services provider said that its revenues fell 9.3% from the same quarter in 2008 and 5.6% from the second quarter of this year—even worse than the 6% decline reported by rival Ericsson, but better than the stomach-churning 21.2% third-quarter decline reported by Nokia's troubled Nokia Siemens Networks unit. Alcatel-Lucent lost €182 million ($268 million) for the quarter.

The outlook? Analysts agree that the fourth quarter should show improvement in sales of mobile phones—a lift to everyone from Nokia (NOK) to rebounding Motorola. But telecom isn't out of the woods yet, until operators start spending again on beefing up their networks—and consumers pile in to buy new handsets and scarf up new mobile services that push operators to upgrade capacity.

But mobile industry watcher Caroline Gabriel, in her always incisive newsletter, Rethink Wireless, offers a smart and interesting analysis of the reason for the delay. Gabriel says that Nokia is using the time to get more feedback from independent Maemo software developers and to fine-tune the device's user experience prior to delivery.

That might sound like a lame excuse, especially so close to launch, but Nokia's willingness to risk bad press and annoy customers underscores how crucial this product is to the company, which has been struggling to recapture momentum in smartphones lost to the likes of Apple (AAPL) and BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIMM). Nokia blamed a shortfall in smartphone sales in part for its disappointing third quarter results announced Oct. 15.

It also highlights the growing strategic importance of Maemo in Nokia's product and technology roadmap. The open source operating system, based on the Debian distribution of Linux, first appeared in early form in 2005 in Nokia's intriguing but little-known N770 handheld tablet and officially debuted in the follow-up N800 in 2007. Now it's the linchpin of the company's drive to stay relevant at the high end of the smartphone market.

So what does this all mean? For one, venture capitalists are tentatively putting their toes back into the water, though many remain cautious. According to DowJones Venture Source's Arno Castanet, "investors [are] spending less, but spending wisely." Smaller investments focused on well-recognized growth markets is a trend. The top three European sectors garnering VC interest: IT ($425 million invested), Healthcare ($216 million), and energy/utilities ($296 million).

And without hyping the global recovery too much, the uptick in investment, particularly among start-ups, may bode well for the broader European economy. British companies, for instance, pocketed $393 million over 67 deals in the third quarter. Sure, that was just over 6% less than the same period last year, but still suggests investor appetite may be returning.

Yet problem areas remain. France, Switzerland, and Israel -- three countries that typically garner a lot of VC interest -- all reported a roughly 50% year-on-year drop in investment during the third quarter. So until investors return to these major European markets, talk of the Great Recession now being behind us is probably premature.

The good news is that the rate of decline is declining, but this release, along with a weak retail sales figure yesterday, may chill some of the recent euphoria that has sent sterling sharply up against the dollar. Sterling declined today on the release to $1.64. It was also down against the euro.

The stock market shrugged off the news with the FTSE 100 up more than 1% in morning trading on Oct. 23. Investors may interpret poor economic news as good for stocks because the bad data will make the Bank of England less likely to consider raising interest rates and more likely to continue with its purchases of bonds known as "quantitative easing."

To this observer, the economy feels somewhat better. Cab drivers, usually a good indicator, report that business is picking up. House prices have been rising. And a leading contemporary art dealer exhibiting at the Frieze art fair said that the market for her wares had been improving since May. Of course, none of this is much consolation to those who continue to lose jobs.

However, operating profit beat expectations after Ericsson, the world's largest maker of equipment for wireless networks, was able to cut costs enough to compensate for the decline in sales. Operating profit slipped just 3% from a year earlier to $803 million. "We do see effects from the economic environment but our restructuring is successful," Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg told analysts on a conference call.

The Ericsson results were a reminder that the global economy remains fragile and that companies are still hesitant to make big capital expenditures. Better-than-expected earnings by other big companies in recent days, including carmaker Daimler and Germany's Deutsche Bank, had buoyed hopes that world economic growth is finding its footing. But a dismal earnings report from Nokia (NOK) that owed largely to problems at its Nokia Siemens Networks wireless infrastructure unit gave investors reason to worry about the state of the telecom equipment sector.

Ericsson shares slumped as much as 7% after the earnings announcement, closing down 3.45% in New York trading. Svanberg said he thinks investors were reacting to statements the company made about weak demand in emerging markets. "Emerging markets in general are good for us. But in smaller emerging markets where you see currencies decline, where you see GDP decline, consumers have less buying power. Russia and Ukraine are some examples," Svanberg said in an interview.

Ericsson did not give a specific forecast for coming quarters, frustrating market-watchers looking for solid indications of a pickup. "There is no visibility into Q4 whatsoever," analyst Stuart Jeffrey at Nomura said in an e-mail. While Nomura rates Ericsson a good long-term investment, "the short term is certainly looking a little shaky," Jeffrey said.

(With reporting by Peter Elstrom)

I've just arrived in Madrid from Barcelona during a reporting trip. And for the first time, I chose the high-speed rail system, known locally as Ave, instead of a traditional airline connection. My verdict: The train beats air travel hands down.

That certainly wasn't always the case. It has been years since I've traveled between the two biggest Spanish cities, but I remember well that there used to be only two options: Forking out big bucks for an airline ticket on the national carrier, Iberia, or facing five or more hours trundling slowly across Spain's countryside in a worn-out train.

Since early 2008, though, Spaniards have enjoyed the new, state-of-the-art Ave railway service that makes the journey between the city centers of Madrid and Barcelona in just two-and-a-half hours. (No traveling to far-flung airports, long lines for check-in and security, fighting for space in overhead luggage bins...) It's another of the superfast train systems that cover Europe and that are the envy of some dreamers in the U.S.

(The Madrid-Barcelona Ave line uses trains from Germany's Siemens. Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this posting said the equipment came from Alstom, which makes the technology used in France's famous TGV. But Alstom gear is, in fact, used on Spain's high speed service between Madrid and Seville.)

Needless to say, the arrival of Ave hasn't been good news for Iberia or a number of discount Spanish airlines that sprang up in recent years. According to media reports, high-speed trains now carry almost half of the passengers between Madrid and Barcelona.

It's easy to see why. Sitting in comfortable seats with loads of legroom (I'm 6'4", so that's pretty important), I had a choice of watching a movie on flatscreen TVs spread throughout the cabin, or listening to a selection of radio stations piped through a jack next to my seat. A well-stocked food cart also helped pass the time. As Bruno, a marketing exec from Barcelona who was sitting next to me, said: "Why fly when you have all of this?"

Indeed, the spread of Spain's high-speed fleet will soon eclipse that of France, whose TGV trains have become synonymous with 185 mile-per-hour travel. And the quality of the Spanish service should give others pause—particularly France's SNCF, which partly runs the considerably less generous Eurostar service between London and continental cities. If extra amenities come free with Spain's high-speed trains, why can't others around Europe (and beyond) offer something similar?

The two-paragraph press release from the bank did not include any revenue figures or a breakdown by company division. Deutsche Bank said only that all units were profitable. Pre-tax profit was $1.9 billion, vs. $139 million a year earlier. Tax credits helped boost the net income figure, the bank said. In addition, the bank's Tier 1 capital ratio, a key measure of its financial health, was 11.7%, a comfortable level. The bank plans to release more detailed figures Oct. 29.

In the course of the global financial crisis Deutsche Bank suffered several multi-billion dollar writedowns, but was able to absorb the losses without a direct government bailout. CEO Josef Ackermann has argued that, by maintaining its independence, the bank will be in a position to gain market share against its battered competitors and acquire assets cheaply. On Oct. 20, for example, Deutsche said it had reached agreement with the Dutch government to acquire parts of ABN Amro's commercial banking operations in the Netherlands, becoming the fourth-largest provider of corporate and investment banking services in the country.

Ackermann could still be proved right, but it appears investors aren't yet convinced.

Though profit was down 39% from a year earlier, the third-quarter earnings were a massive improvement compared to what investors have seen so far in 2009. In the second quarter of 2009 Daimler reported an operating loss of $1.5 billion, which came after a first-quarter loss of $2.1 billion.

The better-than-expected earnings overshadowed signs that sales are still weak. Revenue in the most recent period was flat compared to the previous quarter at about $29 billion. The return to profit was the result of cost cutting. Daimler is on track to exceed its goal of cutting costs by $6 billion, CEO Dieter Zetsche told German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche.

The mere fact that Daimler didn't suffer another catastrophic sales decline seemed to be enough for investors. They focused instead on the improvement in profitability, as Daimler shares rose 7%. "Despite the continuing weakness in demand, Daimler managed to return to profit sooner than we expected," Marc-Rene Tonn, senior analyst at bank M.M. Warburg, said in a note to investors.

Selling gold during a recession? Harrods believes the strategy makes a lot of sense. The dollar and pound are weak, interest rates are low, and markets are jittery. Gold prices, in contrast, recently hit a record high of $1,072 an ounce. And for wealthy investors, who comprise the luxury store's core clientele, gold represents one of the few remaining safe havens.

A full-sized 12.5-kilogram bar (around 27.5 pounds) costs about $466,000 based on Oct. 15 prices. Harrods will sell a range of gold including coins, small one-gram gold bars, and the more substantial 12.5-kilogram bars. Harrods says it made a number of high-value sales the first day the gold range was introduced on Oct. 15.

But as any serious shopper knows, don't expect a bargain at Harrods. The store says its premium on Krugerrand gold coins is currently set 11% above spot price—more than twice the average mark-up already paid by retail investors using typical U.S. and European coin dealers.

But Nokia's bleak third quarter report issued on Oct. 15 contained some important nuggets of hope. To start with, the company actually did somewhat better than many analysts had predicted. Though revenues were slightly short of Wall Street consensus (€9.81 billion, vs. analyst expectations of €9.93 billion) tight cost controls allowed the world's largest mobile handset maker to turn in better-than-expected earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of €741 million, vs. consensus of €702 million.

As a result, Nokia's earnings per share, represented by non-IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) accounting, came in at €0.17, compared with an expectation of €0.13. Nokia's €0.15 per share net loss according to IFRS rules owed to restructuring charges, goodwill writedowns, amortization of intangible assets, and other "impairments" adding up to €1.167 billion.

What's more, there were several positive trends in underlying sales performance. Nokia's quarterly volume of 108.5 million handsets topped expectations by nearly 3 million units, and its average selling price of €62 ($92.40) was above analyst estimates of €61.20. Though Nokia's estimated global market share fell slightly to 37.6%, below some estimates, it was well within the range of expectations.

To put that into context, the deal outshines the $4.3 billion float of Brazil's Visanet early this year, which itself had been a national record. The cash raising also outmatched a spate of Chinese IPOs (predominantly in the construction and infrastructure sectors) that have raised over $20 billion combined this year alone, according to data provider Dealogic.

According to Santander, the extra capital will be used to expand its Brazilian presence -- it's currently the country's third-largest bank by assets. It also will shore up Santander's capital ratio, a key indicator of financial strength. This appears another savvy move by Santander's canny chairman, Emilio Botin.