Toyota has slipped to No. 2 on Millward Brown's BrandZ Top 100 chart as the world's most valuable automotive brand, Paul McVeigh reports, as the controversy over various recalls took it toll with consumers' perceptions of the brand. Its value dropped 27% to just under $21.8 billion. BWM AG now sits atop the list, even though its value also dropped -- 9% to just over $21.8 billion. While Toyota is down, it's certainly not out, Millward Brown global brand director Peter Walshe maintains. "It is a strong brand and is trying hard to overcome the damage through a …

Proctor & Gamble, which trimmed U.S. ad spending by more than 15% last year, is pumping more money into marketing, promotions and new products to return the company to its traditional growth range, David Holthaus reports. A pipeline full of new products is driving the increased spending, executives say, but the company also hopes to lure back consumers who ditched its brands for cheaper products. "P&G has watched its U.S. market share erode over the past 18 months as consumers traded down from P&G's premium-priced portfolio to value brands," points out Bill Chappell, an analyst with …

IHOP has introduced "five-layer pancake stackers" -- a limited-time concoction that includes a layer of "crust-less cheesecake" in between two pancakes topped with fruit and whipped cream, Zain Shauk reports. Throw in the bacon, hash browns and two eggs it comes with and you're talking 1,250 calories for about $4.99 nationwide and $5.99 in the Los Angeles area, according to the company. "There's always going to be some consumers that don't listen, don't care about health that just basically say, 'I'm going to eat whatever I want,'" says Keri Gans, a registered dietitian and spokeswoman for …

Bill Gates has invested $10 million in Schrodinger LLC, a 140-person company in Oregon that makes software to develop new pharmaceuticals. "It's a vision that for decades has eluded a host of start-ups," writes Robert Guth, but Gates' investment adds his considerable weight to the field of computational chemistry. "There was a lot of hype around [the field] and rapid expansion," says Charles Reynolds, senior director at Ansaris, a company that emerged from another one that collapsed when the biotech bubble burst a decade ago. "Some of those expectations were not probably really reasonable." Schrodinger's software …

Hewlett-Packard is buying mobile-phone maker Palm, which has been in a protracted struggle to compete against devices that have leapfrogged it technologically in recent years, for $1.2 billion, Brandon Bailey and Troy Wolverton report. HP executives plan to use Palm's webOS operating system in everything from tablet computers to new phones. "Today's announcement is about how HP will provide customers with a great experience as they increasingly live their lives online, for work, entertainment and everything in between," says Todd Bradley, the HP evp in charge of the company's PC division. Several analysts …