Tokyo - Japan's Panasonic Corp is considering buying troubled Sanyo Electric Co to become the nation's largest electronics manufacturer, news reports said Saturday.

Panasonic wants to begin negotiations with the three top shareholders of its domestic competitor as early as this month, the Nikkei business daily reported.

Should the negotiations be successful it would be the first merger between two large Japanese electronics companies.

Hyderabad-based MIC Electronics has entered into Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Italian-based Ceracchi Illuminazione, to get access to European markets and others like Russia, Morroco and Eastern European countries.

Ceracchi Illuminazione is a renowned lightening company in Italy for design, development and marketing of light-emitting-diode (LED) lightening solutions.

Beijing - The global economic crisis is expected to slow China's economy down from previous double-digit growth rates to 9.8 per cent in 2008, Chinese officials said Friday.

After a significant slowdown in the third quarter, caused by the economic crisis, China's economy grew 9.9 per cent in the first nine months of the year, less than expected, China's State Information Centre was quoted as saying by the China Daily newspaper.

The effects of the crisis were expected to increase gradually, the centre said, adding that China's economic planners will have to concentrate on ensuring rapid and stable growth in 2009.

Helsinki - Finnish flag carrier Finnair on Friday said higher fuel costs and lower ticket prices contributed to a "weak third quarter."

The group posted a pre-tax loss of 22 million euros (28 million dollars), compared to a pre-tax profit of 59.9 million euros for the corresponding business period in 2007.

Turnover increased 2.7 per cent to 559 million euros in the quarter, the carrier said.

Stockholm - Swedish state-owned energy group Vattenfall on Thursday posted higher operating profits for third-quarter 2008, boosted by its operations in the Nordic region.

Operating profit before tax and interest was 5.59 billion kronor (726 million dollars), up 17 per cent year-on-year.

Third-quarter turnover increased by 17 per cent to 37 billion kronor, while the net profit fell some 29 per cent to 2.48 billion kronor.