Chinese pickup truck maker Hebei Zhongxing Automobile Co is in talks with General Motors and major Chinese automaker FAW Group to explore opportunities for cooperation, including possible equity ties, a source close to the situation said. “Consolidation is inevitable in the Chinese auto market, which now has more than 100 players, and a company of Zhongxing’s size makes a good takeover target or joint venture partner,” the source told Reuters. “Zhongxing is holding talks with several potential partners including FAW and GM to seek cooperative opportunities, including possible equity ties, but nothing has been decided at the moment,” a source said.

Tribune has narrowed the potential list of bidders for the storied Chicago Cubs baseball team to 3-5 groups bidding $1 billion or more, according to sources briefed on the matter. Of the 10 groups approved to bid for the Cubs by Major League Baseball, only those that bid $1 billion or more for the team, its home ballpark Wrigley Field and a stake in a regional sports TV network advanced to the next round, said two sources, who asked not to be identified because the process is ongoing. While Tribune and baseball officials declined to comment, three sources said Internet billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the National Basketball Association Dallas Mavericks; and a publicly held group led by New York City taxi tycoon Andrew Murstein were among those advancing. Others advancing included Tom Ricketts, chief executive of Incapital LLC, a Chicago securities and investment banking firm, and son of the founder of TD Ameritrade; and a group headed by Michael Tokarz, chairman of MVC Capital, one of the sources said. The Tokarz group includes Fred Malek, who previously bid on the baseball team in Washington.

Other deals of the day:

* The head of state-run Korea Development Bank said it would resume the delayed sale of Daewoo Shipbuilding in August, possibly wrapping up the $4 billion deal by end-2008.

* South Korea’s Hana Financial Group, the country’s No.4 banking group, said its banking unit would invest 329.6 billion won ($327 million) to take a 19.7 percent stake in the Bank of Jilin in China.

* Malaysia’s Maybank is set to buy another 5 percent of Pakistan’s MCB Bank as early as next month, in a deal estimated at $218 million, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

* Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of top chipmaker Intel Corp, said it would pump $17 million into three Indian companies, comprising two Internet portals and one advertising firm.

* Mapletree Investments, a property firm owned by Singapore state investor Temasek, said it will support a rights issue by Mapletree Logistics Trust by buying units not taken up by other investors.

New Glaxo CEO Andrew Witty, 43, is embracing the concept wholeheartedly via a bold deal with South Africa’s Aspen that takes the world’s second biggest drugmaker into generics in emerging markets and a strategy to broaden out the group.

But how long will Glaxo’s not-so-patient shareholders have to wait to reap the rewards?

Witty gave a confident performance during a two-hour meeting with analysts this week, but a sliding share price the day after suggests investors see little to cheer about just yet.

Investing for diversity to de-risk the business may make sense, but bulking up in non-prescription healthcare products, vaccines, biotech and emerging markets will take time – as well as money, as evidenced by the decision to delay completion of the company’s 12 billion pounds buyback programme.

“You can’t turn a supertanker on a dime,” says Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Bourdot.

Today, Morgan Stanley said in a research note that although the bank may make a “meaningful” asset disposition, it was unlikely to sell Neuberger.

This apparent contradiction isn’t the first, let’s say, difference of opinion among analysts, reporters, lawyers, bankers and other Wall Street mandarins who have waxed eloquent and written reams on the fate of Lehman, the smallest surviving major independent Wall Street investment bank after the near collapse and takeover of Bear Stearns.

Last week’s flavour was a debate over whether Lehman would go private after a Fox-Pitt Kelton analyst said that may be the best course of action for the brokerage and the New York Post reported that the investment bank was indeed weighing such an option. The idea was quickly shot down in a series of articles, research notes and such that rattled off a host of problems with it.

At least some of Lehman’s issues may just be phantom problems dreamed up by speculators, one investment banker said last week.

“Like the market knows more than the management team and auditors of Lehman Brothers? How’s that possible? What do they know? They don’t know sh*t,” the banker said. “I am not here to defend Lehman. But let’s get real.” 

Still, many of the notes and reports are considered opinions from people who one would suspect do understand a thing or two about how the business works.

And the difference in opinion about the best way forward could very well illustrate the problem Lehman Chief Dick Fuld and his team are facing today — there are no easy solutions before the investment bank.

So what do you think Lehman will do?

(Photo: This Reuters picture shows a Sotheby’s employee look at ”Fortune Teller,” a painting by late Swiss artist Albert Anker.)

The head of Microsoft’s Platforms and Services Business (which includes the online business), Kevin Johnson, is

Release out: Solid quarter in a weak economy. Revenue in line, EPS through roof once including a $53 million one time non-cash gain from the sale of a European DVD business. …