NEW YORK, March 6 (Reuters) – Johnson Controls Inc
is exploring a potential sale of its automotive electronics
business, but has no “current intention” to sell its automotive
interiors unit, the company said on Wednesday.

Johnson Controls, the largest U.S. auto supplier with sales
of $5.5 billion in car interiors and electronics for fiscal
2012, has grappled with industry-wide pressure on margins, low
vehicle production in Europe and increased competition from
China.

NEW YORK/DETROIT (Reuters) – Johnson Controls Inc (JCI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is exploring a potential sale of its automotive interiors unit, a move that would allow the diversified manufacturer to focus on higher-margin building controls and next-generation car batteries, three people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Shares of Johnson Controls were up about 6 percent to $33.74 (22.44 pounds) on the New York Stock Exchange, valuing the diversified conglomerate at around $23 billion (15 billion pounds).

NEW YORK/DETROIT, March 6 (Reuters) – Johnson Controls Inc
is exploring a potential sale of its automotive
interiors unit, a move that would allow the diversified
manufacturer to focus on higher-margin building controls and
next-generation car batteries, three people familiar with the
matter said on Wednesday.

Shares of Johnson Controls were up about 6 percent to $33.74
on the New York Stock Exchange, valuing the diversified
conglomerate at around $23 billion.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Johnson Controls Inc (JCI.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is exploring a potential sale of its automotive interiors unit, a move that would allow the diversified manufacturer to focus on higher-margin building controls and next-generation car batteries, three people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Shares of Johnson Controls rose 6.7 percent to $33.95 on the New York Stock Exchange, valuing the diversified conglomerate at nearly $23 billion.

NEW YORK, March 6 (Reuters) – Johnson Controls Inc
is exploring a potential sale of its automotive interiors unit,
a move that would allow the diversified manufacturer to focus on
higher-margin building controls and next-generation car
batteries, three people familiar with the matter said on
Wednesday.

Shares of Johnson Controls rose 6.7 percent to $33.95 on the
New York Stock Exchange, valuing the diversified conglomerate at
nearly $23 billion.

DETROIT, March 5 (Reuters) – United Auto Workers President
Bob King says he has finally begun to stem the decades-long
membership decline in one of America’s most powerful labor
unions, but his goal of organizing at least one foreign-owned
automaker in the South continues to elude him.

King, 66, who is slated to step down in June 2014, said two
years ago that the UAW did not have a future if it could not
organize workers at plants in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and
Tennessee that are owned by Japanese, German and South Korean
auto makers.

DETROIT (Reuters) – Singer Bobby Rogers, a founding member of the hit-making Motown group the Miracles along with Smokey Robinson, died on Sunday in suburban Detroit after a lengthy illness, family members and associates said. He was 73.

Rogers was a tenor in the original Motown lineup of the group that also included Robinson as the lead singer, bass vocalist Warren “Pete” Moore, baritone Ronnie White and the quintet’s lone female vocalist, Claudette Rogers.

KOKOMO, Indiana (Reuters) – Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of both Fiat and its majority-owned Chrysler Group LLC unit, said he sees a 50 percent chance that Chrysler will go public but would prefer that it be fully merged with Fiat.

Fiat shares ownership in the smallest U.S. automaker with a retiree trust fund affiliated with the United Auto Workers labor union. Marchionne said he would prefer that Italian automaker Fiat buy the trust fund’s holdings.

By Bernie Woodall

(Reuters) – Workers from the Nissan Motor Co auto plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, met on Tuesday with United Auto Workers union representatives to discuss another organizing effort at the Japanese automaker’s first U.S. factory.

The UAW is now active in trying to organize workers at two Nissan plants. The UAW since last spring has been talking with workers at Nissan’s other major U.S. assembly plant, in Canton, Mississippi, outside of Jackson.

DETROIT, Feb 26 (Reuters) – U.S. auto sales in February were
expected to show a fourth straight month of seasonally adjusted
annualized sales above 15 million vehicles for the first time
since early 2008, a sign of a sustained recovery after the
recession.

Forty-one analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters forecast on
average a 4 percent rise in February sales, to an annualized
rate of 15.1 million vehicles. The forecasts ranged from 14.9
million to 15.75 million vehicles, on an annualized basis.