(Reuters) - Qantas Airways (QAN.AX) chief executive Alan Joyce has said an engine failure on an A380 superjumbo should be blamed on the engine's design and had nothing to do with the airline's operations. A mid-flight failure of a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine (RR.L) on November 4 forced Qantas to ground its six-plane A380 fleet. On Saturday, the airline resumed some A380 operations but four of the planes remain grounded.

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(Reuters) - Irish talks to secure an 85 billion euro ($112.5 billion) aid package entered the final hours on Saturday with opposition parties warning they would oppose any deal that forced the country to pay a high interest rate on EU/IMF loans. Negotiators were holed up in a 250-year-old Dublin luxury hotel to finalize the deal, which the country needs to help it cope with mounting losses at state-owned banks and a massive budget deficit that will rise to nearly a third of total economic output this year.

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(Reuters) - Retailers scaled back discounts and shoppers were less frenzied on Saturday, a day after the mad rush for "Black Friday" bargains kicked off the holiday shopping season. The strategy of easing up on discounts makes sense considering the strong kick-off to the busiest selling season of the year and that retailers have almost a month to sell their goods before Christmas Day, analysts said.

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(Reuters) - The EU and the IMF could extend the period in which Greece must repay its bailout loans by five years, to make it easier for it to service its debt, a Greek newspaper said on Saturday, citing an IMF official. "We have the possibility to extend the repayment period ... from about six years to around 11," the newspaper Realnews quoted Poul Thomsen, the IMF official in charge of the Greek bailout, as saying in an interview.

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(Reuters) - French luxury goods group Hermes (HRMS.PA) has hired BNP Paribas and Bank of America Merrill Lynch as a defense move after predatory moves by larger rival LVMH (LVMH.PA), The Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday. Separately, Le Journal du Dimanche reported that descendants of the founding Dumas family, who control over 70 percent of Hermes shares, will meet on Friday December 3 at the company's Paris headquarters to discuss how to maintain control of the group.

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(Reuters) - Australia's Qantas Airways resumed flights of its Airbus A380 superjumbos on Saturday, after a mid-flight engine failure grounded all six of the planes earlier this month, witnesses said. Chief Executive Alan Joyce joined the first resumed flight to show that he was confident the aircraft was safe, saying before departure the airline was "always going to operate with 100 percent safety in mind."

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(Reuters) - EADS (EAD.PA) is confident it can sell up to 500 of its Airbus A400M military transporters and that the project will be profitable, the aircraft maker's finance chief told a German newspaper. "We see a broad global market of 400 to 500 aircraft with good chances for this aircraft to turn profits in the long term," CFO Hans-Peter Ring was quoted as saying on Saturday in an advance copy of an interview to be published in Sunday paper Euro am Sonntag.

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(Reuters) - General Motors Co's (GM.N) initial public offering became the world's biggest at $23.1 billion after underwriters swiftly took up additional shares following last week's IPO. The added shares vaulted GM past Agricultural Bank of China's (601288.SS) $22.1 billion IPO in July and underscored the strong demand for the taxpayer-rescued automaker's stock.

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(Reuters) - Commodity-related shares led U.S. stocks lower on Friday in a shortened post-holiday session, as investors unloaded risky assets on worries that euro-zone debt problems may continue to spread. The U.S. dollar rallied while the euro slid to a new two-month low amid fears that Portugal and Spain could follow Ireland in needing bailouts to shore up their economies.

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(Reuters) - FrontPoint Partners, a $7.5 billion hedge fund currently embroiled in the U.S. government's fast-moving insider trading probe, has been asked to return $3 billion to its investors. "The deadline for year-end redemptions has elapsed and we have received approximately $3 billion in total redemption requests," FrontPoint co-chief executive officers Dan Waters and Mike Kelly said in a letter sent to investors on Friday. Reuters obtained a copy of the letter.

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