MARKETS / FINANCE

Japanese bank lending logged its biggest annual fall in more than four years in January as companies faced with overcapacity and a murky economic outlook steered clear of borrowing for capital investment purposes.

Barclays Wealth, the private banking arm of British bank Barclays , has hired another three bankers from UBS , adding to the 10 who were recruited in August last year.

Citigroup Inc has held talks with private equity groups and hedge funds over the sale of $3 billion in car loans in a move to clear troubled assets from its balance sheet, according to a report by the Financial Times.

CIT Group Inc has hired former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain as its new chief executive, the commercial lender said late on Sunday, wagering that the well-traveled executive can guide its post-bankruptcy turnaround.

President Barack Obama said on Sunday the economy has turned the corner and resumed growth.

Private equity firms are again being threatened with higher taxes, as a long-running debate over how to classify their profits again becomes a focus for governments desperate for cash.

The Aussie dollar remained relatively range bound on Friday bouncing between 0.8650 and 0.8700 for the majority of the Asian session.

Trade tensions are starting to flare as the pace of the global economic revival shows signs of slowing.

SAP AG Chief Executive Leo Apotheker, who has been with the company for more than 20 years, resigned with immediate effect just seven months after taking over as sole chief executive.

The risk the economy will slip back into recession is lower now than at any time in the past year, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Sunday, while conceding that recovery will be slow and uneven.

U.S. regulators are investigating whether the mortgage insurance market was improperly distressed in 2008 because of payment demands that Goldman Sachs Group Inc and other banks made on American International Group Inc , The New York Times reported on Sunday.

U.S. stocks face more turbulence that could send indexes spiraling through key levels this week as doubts about the global recovery's pace persist and fears linger over Europe's sovereign debt woes.

Switzerland must consider the automatic exchange of tax information with European Union governments if Swiss banks are to have unlimited access to EU markets, the country's finance minister said in an interview published on Sunday.

The United States is unwilling to re-enter talks to alter a key deal struck with Switzerland to end a damaging tax case against Swiss banking group UBS AG , the U.S. ambassador in Berne was quoted saying in a Swiss Sunday paper.

Greece will stick to its deficit-cutting plan and the first three months of the year will be crucial for regaining investors and EU confidence, the country's finance minister said in an interview on Sunday.

The risk the U.S. economy will slip back into recession is lower now than at any time in the past year, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Sunday, while conceding that recovery will be slow and uneven.

The idea of a global tax on banks to recapture bailout costs gained ground on Saturday, boosted by the Obama administration's latest proposals, but there was no agreement on a specific design.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner insisted on Saturday that major economies were not easing up on their commitment to stiffen the rules for banks just because the global economy was recovering.

In a sign it is concerned about Main Street anger over bankers' compensation, Goldman Sachs Group Inc decided to give its CEO Lloyd Blankfein and other top executives lower bonuses than many had expected.

The common misconception is that ETFs take in investor money and then go out and buy the assets according to their investment mandate, like a traditional open-end mutual fund.

Recently there have been a number of articles on the Internet about tungsten-filled gold bars, as well as rumours that there are more fake and counterfeit coins than real ones.

Group of Seven officials agree banks must contribute toward the cost of dealing with the financial crisis but have not agreed on how they should pay, a German official said on Saturday.

Following are comments by finance ministers and other officials after a meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, focused on the euro zone's budget crisis, bank regulation and economic recovery.

Dubai's Shuaa Capital narrowed its net loss 73 percent in the fourth quarter, as the investment bank's brokerage and private equity operations returned to profit and its corporate division curbed losses.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday told the head of state-owned bank VEB Vladimir Dmitriev that lending rates must continue to decline, Russian agencies reported.

Finance chiefs from the world's rich powers opened an icy summit on Friday mulling how to prevent worry about deepening southern European debt from derailing an already fragile global recovery.

Stocks face more turbulence that could send indexes spiraling through key levels next week as doubts about the pace of the global recovery persist and fears over Europe's sovereign debt woes rattle sentiment.

Regulators considering new rules for U.S. stock markets should take care not to assume that certain types of high-frequency trading are harmful, speakers at a conference on algorithmic trading said on Friday.

The U.S. unemployment rate surprisingly fell to a five-month low of 9.7 percent in January and factory payrolls grew for the first time since 2007, hinting at a labor market recovery even though the economy lost 20,000 jobs.