(Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi lost his parliamentary majority on Tuesday after his reform-shy government's borrowing costs soared into the euro zone's danger zone with investors fearing a new, bigger Greece. Berlusconi won a crunch parliamentary vote on budget policy because the center-left opposition abstained. But he secured only 308 votes in the 630-seat chamber of deputies, indicating he no longer had a majority.

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(Reuters) - Japan's Olympus admitted on Tuesday it hid losses on securities investments dating back two decades, bowing to weeks of pressure to explain a series of baffling transactions that have put the future of the firm in doubt. The revelations by the 92-year-old company appear to vindicate ex-CEO Michael Woodford, who has staged a campaign since being sacked on October 14 to force the firm to come clean on nearly $1.5 billion in questionable payments.

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(Reuters) - The average Wall Street bonus will decline by 20 percent to 30 percent this year, according to a closely watched compensation report, as banks cut costs and lay off workers in a weak environment for trading and deal-making. Employees in the bond-trading business will face the sharpest pay cuts, with bonuses down 35 percent to 45 percent from a year earlier, according to a projection by New York compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates.

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(Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) withdrew its annual profit guidance on Tuesday as Thai floods threaten output just as it had recovered from supply shortages that battered production after the March earthquake in Japan. Like Toyota, Honda Motor Co (7267.T) also dropped its earnings forecasts after being hard hit by Thailand's worst floods in at least 50 years, although Nissan Motor Co (7201.T) raised its outlook as it adapts more quickly to the disaster.

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(Reuters) - Stocks fell in choppy trade on Monday, with the Nasdaq down 1 percent, as political uncertainty in Italy fueled investor concern the euro zone debt crisis could engulf the bloc's third biggest economy. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 48.13 points, or 0.40 percent, to 11,935.11. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 6.21 points, or 0.50 percent, to 1,247.02. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 28.26 points, or 1.05 percent, to 2,657.89.

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(Reuters) - Euro zone governments rushed to placate feverish bond markets on Monday as the 17-nation currency bloc's debt crisis threatened to accelerate out of control. Greece's outgoing Socialist prime minister and conservative opposition leader raced to put in place an interim national unity government for just long enough to save the country from imminent default by implementing a new bailout program.

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(Reuters) - Nearly two-thirds of positions from the UK unit of MF Global were still open on Monday, a week after it filed for bankruptcy protection, sparking frustration about delays in moving business to new brokers and dampening volumes in metals trading. U.S. exchanges, meanwhile, have cut margin requirements on some accounts from MF Global to limit the fallout on futures markets from the collapse of the broker.

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(Reuters) - Retail sales in the 17 countries sharing the euro fell more than expected in September despite some resilience in powerhouse Germany, the EU's statistics office said on Monday, reinforcing concern that the bloc's economy may be heading for a recession. In the first negative reading since May, sales slipped 0.7 percent in September from the previous month, Eurostat said in an initial estimate. That was much worse than the 0.1 percent decrease forecast in a Reuters poll of economists. Sales in the 27-nation European Union fell 0.3 percent in the same period.

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(Reuters) - The collapse of BP's (BP.L) planned sale of a $7 billion stake in an Argentinean unit is Chief Executive Bob Dudley's second failed multi-billion dollar deal this year and has renewed investor concerns about his claimed turnaround of the group. Dudley hinted last month that the oil giant could lift its dividend next February, saying the group had reached a "turning point" after its Gulf of Mexico oil spill. But the failed deal now puts a question mark over those plans.

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(Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell in morning trading on Friday after two days of steep gains as richer nations appeared to back away from a European Union plan to broaden funding for a euro zone bailout fund. A mixed report on the U.S. labor market was expected to keep trading volatile going into the weekend.

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