German banks face a critical situation because foreign banks are reluctant to lend to them after the joint rescue of small-company lender IKB, state-backed lender WestLB's chief executive said.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled a willingness to consider an early cut in the benchmark interest rate to quell market unrest, a key U.S. lawmaker said on Tuesday after meeting with the Fed chief, sending Wall Street higher.
Shares in Bayer rose on Tuesday on renewed market talk that Switzerland's Novartis was interested in the German drugs and chemicals group, traders said. There is the rumour again that Novartis is bidding for Bayer, one trader said without giving any further details.
Finance chiefs from the world's three biggest economies sought on Tuesday to keep a lid on global market jitters as banks at the sharp end of a global financial storm said they faced serious trouble. Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson agreed to keep a close eye on markets while German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said there was no sign of the turmoil hitting the wider economy.
Calm returned slowly to financial markets on Monday, but there were lingering signs that credit problems persist despite policy-makers' insistence that the global economic growth would remain solid.
Investors boosted stocks and moved back into other riskier assets on Monday as immediate fears of a credit crunch waned following the Federal Reserve's confidence-building move last week.
World stocks took another dive on Friday despite early attempts at a rebound in Europe while currency dealers drove the Japanese yen to a 14-month high against the dollar, throwing out risky leverage. Wall Street looked set for a weak opening.
Relations between the United States and Europe are likely to improve dramatically under new French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a U.S. congressional leader said on Thursday.
Between the shelves of product catalogues on the wall of a spartan office in an eastern German lighting factory sits a framed quotation, in bold black lettering on silver paper, from Winston Churchill.
Dutch chemicals company Akzo Nobel is set to announce on Monday it has agreed to buy British rival ICI for about 8 billion pounds ($16.18 billion), people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.
For investors, the subprime crisis is the first real test of will since the Internet stock bust six years ago.
Major central banks swept in to calm credit markets spooked by mounting losses on Thursday, with the European Central Bank injecting record amounts of cash to prevent the financial system from seizing up.
France's biggest listed bank, BNP Paribas froze 1.6 billion euros ($2.2 billion) worth of funds on Thursday, citing the U.S. subprime mortgage sector woes that have rattled financial markets worldwide.
France's biggest listed bank, BNP Paribas, froze 1.6 billion euros ($2.2 billion) worth of funds on Thursday, citing U.S. subprime mortgage sector problems. The news sent shivers through nervous financial markets. It came as Germany's Bundesbank met to discuss a rescue package for lender IKB, which has been hit by the subprime crisis too.
Emerging economies will edge past the developed countries in terms of economic growth by 2050, the Ernst and Young European Attractiveness Survey 2007 has revealed.
St Gobain, the world's biggest building materials group, said on Tuesday it would buy clay and mortar company Maxit Group from Germany's HeidelbergCement in a deal worth around $3 billion.
Fears of a global credit squeeze and worries about U.S. economic strength swept across financial markets on Monday, shaking up stocks, knocking the dollar to a 15-year low and straining popular currency trades.
Over-fishing has made Atlantic bluefin tuna a prized delicacy a century after the fish were scorned in Europe as pet food, according to studies on Sunday that urged better international protection.
Image problems will force out weaker firms and prepare savvy ones for the global marketplace, experts say.
The high-level meeting would bring together the world's biggest polluters to find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Allianz, Europe's biggest insurer, beat forecasts with net profit of 2.140 billion euros ($2.9 billion) in the second quarter, down 6 percent from a year earlier when the result was boosted by asset sales.
The U.S. biotechnology industry is awaiting this fall's deadline for Europe to speed up its approval of new biotech food and crops -- a process Washington has long complained is woefully slow -- in the hope of increased access to a major market.
