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The Hong Kong stock exchange said on Thursday it will consider international alliances after Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext announced plans to form the world's biggest trading powerhouse.

Google Inc and Facebook Inc, plus others, have held low level takeover talks with Twitter that give the Internet sensation a value as high as $10 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Executives at microblogging company Twitter Inc. have held low level talks with executives at Facebook Inc and Google Inc in recent months, about a possible takeover of Twitter, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Senior U.S. lawmakers demanded answers on Tuesday from regulators and financial exchange operators about computer hacking attacks.

Two hedge fund managers were arrested on insider trading charges on Tuesday, while another portfolio manager and an analyst agreed to plead guilty in connection with the probe, the latest development in a broad investigation of hedge funds' trading activities.

A investigation into allegations of insider trading in the hedge fund industry for the first time reached former employees of billionaire trader Steven A. Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors.

Canadian regulators are proposing new guidelines to govern how investment dealers advertise and communicate with clients on popular social media such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

Wealthy tax evaders with assets stashed offshore can come clean with U.S. authorities under a new amnesty program with reduced penalties, the government said on Tuesday.

Regulators began their most forceful attempt yet to clamp down on bank bonuses since the 2007-2009 financial crisis, and warned firms they would seek to counter attempts to circumvent the reforms.

Regulators on Monday are expected to make their most forceful attempt yet to clamp down bank bonuses since the 2007-2009 financial crisis, but the proposals pale in comparison to harsher restrictions already set in Europe.

A California judge has ruled to allow a group of lawyers with connections to Oakland City Hall to represent alleged Nortenos gang members who are facing a city lawsuit that seeks to prevent them from hanging out in the city's Fruitvale neighborhood.

Allen & Overy (A&O) plans to open an operational support and legal services center in Belfast, the capital city of Northern Ireland, and employ 300 people by 2014 to run it.

The state of California has agreed to settle a predatory lending lawsuit which it has filed against two former Countrywide Financial Corp. executives for $6.5 million.

India's former Telecom Minister Andimuthu Raja, his personal secretary RK Chandolia and former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura have been arrested by India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) over his alleged manipulation while allocating the second-generation telecom (2G) spectrum licenses in 2007 and 2008.

Dickstein Shapiro, a Washington D.C.-based law and lobbying firm, said that former U.S. Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) has joined the firm as a senior adviser.

Afghanistan's central bank expects an Islamic banking law to be enacted by September, drawing billions in deposits from citizens wary of the conventional banking system, a senior official said.

Bank of America Corp has agreed to pay $410 million to settle lawsuits accusing it of charging customers with excessive overdraft fees, court documents show.

Oakland officials have been warned by federal authorities not to allow large-scale marijuana farms in the city as it violates U.S. laws and could lead to a crackdown on the growers and their backers.

Top executives at JP Morgan Chase & Co. knew about the massive Ponzi scam of the bank's client Bernard Madoff much before it became public but turned a blind eye to it, hoping to protect the bank's interests, according to a $6.4 billion lawsuit filed by a court-appointed trustee seeking to recover money for former Madoff clients.

Computer hackers repeatedly entered the network of the company that runs the Nasdaq stock market in the past year, but the trading platform was not compromised, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Tighter budgets at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could mean killing vital technology upgrades needed to catch swindlers, the agency's chief said on Friday in a blunt appeal for more funding.

The owners of the New York Mets were accused of reaping $300 million of fictitious profits from Bernard Madoff's record Ponzi scheme, a lawsuit by the trustee seeking money for Madoff's victims said.

The independent studio behind the hit Twilight films wants a judge to force bankrupt movie rental chain Blockbuster Inc to pay its bills or force it to into liquidation, according to court documents.

JPMorgan Chase & Co executives stood by silently as their client Bernard Madoff ran his epic Ponzi scheme, hoping to protect the bank's investments and continue doing business with him, a newly released $6.4 billion lawsuit claims.

JPMorgan Chase & Co executives were concerned that Bernard Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, but they silently stood by for years to protect the bank's investments, the trustee for Madoff's investors said.

Answers Corp, owner of the popular Q&A website, agreed to be bought by private-equity firm Summit Partners for about $127 million in cash.

BJ's Wholesale Club Inc said it may put itself up for sale, under pressure from a private equity firm that may make a hostile bid.

Bank of America Corp was hit with a lawsuit on Wednesday claiming the lending giant hid foreclosure problems that eventually led to a decline in its share price.

Iran has witnessed a dramatic increase in executions so far in 2011, United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay said Wednesday and her office said the rate was three times that of last year.