Topic: Floods

Nissan Motor posted on Friday a one-third jump in quarterly profit and projected a 28 percent rise in the year ahead driven by brisk sales momentum in emerging markets.

While fiscal 2012-2013 is shaping up to be a turnaround year for Toyota after hitting roadblocks including natural disasters and a vehicle recall crisis, the world’s second largest carmaker is still off from its earnings peak seen in 2008, highlights one analyst.

Toyota Motor, Japan's top automaker, expects to triple its operating profit this year to more than $12.5 billion, its highest since the financial crisis sent the global car industry skidding.

Honda Motor forecast a near-tripling of operating profit in the year ahead on surging Asian sales and a recovery in the United States, marking an emphatic rebound from a 2011 hammered by the yen's record strength and natural disasters.

Honda Motor said on Thursday it would spend about 3.1 trillion rupiah ($337 million) to build a car production plant in Indonesia with an annual capacity of 120,000 vehicles as it tries to meet growth in Southeast Asia's top economy.

The future of Honda Motor may rest with a pair of contrarian Japanese car engineers working from a drab Tokyo suburb with a hotline to the boardroom. Their mission: just say no. 

Nissan Motor is on track to be the most profitable of Japan's three big automakers this year, after record car sales last year and improved market share in every major region pushed up quarterly operating profit. 

Toyota Motor reported a stronger-than-expected quarterly operating profit and raised its annual forecast on cost cuts and Japanese government subsidies, but sees a "very tough race" in North America.

Ford Motor will report a loss in the Asia Pacific region in 2011 because of the impact of last year's floods in Thailand, the company said on Tuesday.

Despite more than $100 billion in disaster losses around the world this year, insurers are not yet experiencing a broad and sustained increase in pricing power, defying predictions from a year ago that even half those losses would be enough to turn the industry around.