MARKETS / FINANCE

When competitors shut down payments to WikiLeaks after the controversial website released a slew of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables, Sharif Alexandre refused to join the boycott. The Egyptian-born entrepreneur and founder of Xipwire - a Philadelphia-based mobile payments startup - stood opposed to PayPal and Amazon and let customers continue making donations via cellphones.

A bid by the London Stock Exchange to take over TMX Group, operator of the Toronto Stock Exchange, reopens the debate on whether Canada is really open for global business, or if regulatory and political hurdles are set to wreck another high-profile deal.

India plans to award an $11 billion fighter jet contract by the end of March 2012, its defense minister said, as manufacturers at India's airshow vied to boost their share of a fast-growing military hardware market.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday suggested U.S. economic conditions are still too weak for the central bank to pull back on its vast monetary stimulus, despite a welcome drop in the jobless rate.

JPMorgan Chase & Co accused the trustee seeking $6.4 billion for victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme of doing an end run around the law in pursuing his case, and said it has a right to a jury trial.

Germany's Deutsche Boerse is in advanced talks to buy NYSE Euronext to create the world's largest trading powerhouse, marking the second major transatlantic deal in 24 hours in a massive shake-up of an industry under pressure from upstart rivals.

Fujitsu Ltd and Oracle Corp plan to jointly develop next-generation Unix servers and expand their decades-old partnership to include a new distribution agreement, the companies said on Wednesday, as they battle to keep up with market leader IBM.

The London Stock Exchange agreed to buy Canada's stock market operator TMX, while Germany's Deutsche Boerse was in talks to buy NYSE Euronext, signaling that exchanges globally are looking to consolidate.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday that the bipartisan cooperation that sparked the tax deal at the end of last year was an important contributor to business confidence.

Stronger economic growth in the United States will eventually lead to rising inflation this year as increased consumer and business spending drive the recovery, according to a Reuters poll of economists released on Wednesday.

Germany's Deutsche Boerse is in advanced talks to buy NYSE Euronext, and the London Stock Exchange has agreed to buy Canadian stock market operator TMX, as exchanges globally look for ways to boost their markets and cut costs.

American International Group will take a fourth-quarter charge of $4.1 billion for raising its loss reserves, the insurer said on Wednesday.

Mustafa Fikri could not even be at his wife's hospital bedside when she gave birth to their first son. He was working and the last thing on the Cairo cab driver's mind was protesting against Hosni Mubarak's repressive rule. His preoccupation for the day was for the city's roads to stay open and protests to be peaceful, so people would venture out and need his services.

U.S. job openings slipped in December, a government report showed on Tuesday, but a decline in layoffs supported views of a gradual labor market recovery. Job openings, a measure of labor demand, eased 139,000 to a seasonally adjusted 3.1 million, the Labor Department said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

President Barack Obama will propose giving financial relief to U.S. states struggling with high unemployment insurance debt, the White House said on Tuesday, hoping that a lifeline now will avoid bailouts later.

The union representing British Airways BAY.L cabin crew said on Tuesday it planned to ballot members again on taking strike action after saying a recent vote was potentially invalid. Cabin crew voted last month to hold further strikes in a long-running dispute which has already cost the airline some 150 million pounds.

In Chester County, South Carolina, off a dirt road in the middle of a field, insurance companies are literally unleashing a storm.

The London Stock Exchange is to buy Canada's TMX to claw back lost market share and create the world's fourth-largest bourse trading $4.1 trillion of stock a year.

The London Stock Exchange is to buy Canada's TMX stock exchange operator to create the world's fourth-largest trading center and claw back some of the market share it has lost in recent years.

UK unemployment rate is expected to peak this year and will remain stubbornly high during 2012, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said on Wednesday.

China's central bank is poised to raise benchmark interest rates twice more in the first half of 2011 for a total tightening of 50 basis points, before keeping them steady for the remainder of the year, a Reuters poll on Wednesday showed.

Morgan Stanley may turn its remaining proprietary trading group into an electronic client trading business, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Securities regulators on Wednesday will move to scale back markets' reliance on credit rating agencies, after the financial crisis laid bare the industry's shortcomings.

The Federal Communications Commission will launch an initiative on Wednesday to spur broadband deployment by reducing regulatory barriers.

Wells Fargo & Co's chief financial officer will retire after taking nearly a half year of unpaid leave and will be replaced by the bank's administrative chief.

Facebook, the world's largest social-networking site, will open a sales office in Hong Kong, in a move to tap the region's booming Internet scene, local media reported on Wednesday.

Harry & David Holdings Inc, the mail-order food company known for its fruit baskets and Moose Munch snacks, said on Tuesday it may go out of business unless it can agree with creditors on a plan to restructure its debt.

A government probe cleared Toyota Motor Corp's electronics of causing unintended acceleration, a big victory for the world's top automaker as it seeks to recover from the hit it took over runaway vehicle accidents.

After years of asking investors for patience, exchange operator NYSE Euronext says 2011 will be the year that things finally come together.