The overwhelming dominance of Barcelona and Real Madrid in their domestic league will inevitably lead them to abandon Spain for European competition, former Real director general Jorge Valdano said on Friday. Valdano, who was ousted in May after losing a power battle with Real coach Jose Mourinho, said the gap between the wealthy pair and

Europe's most indebted nations are under heavy pressure from their richer neighbours to sort out their finances, but they are unlikely to mimic the impoverished gentlefolk of old by selling off the family silver — or in their case, gold — to do so. More than 750 tonnes of gold are currently sitting in the

Italy must make structural reforms and maintain the commitment it made last month to cut its deficit and increase the flexibility of its economy, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said. In an interview with Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore on Friday, Trichet said that measures announced on August 5, when Prime Minister

New Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda picked a relatively lightweight lawmaker as finance minister on Friday, signalling the fiscally conservative leader intends to call the shots on key economic policies himself. Noda, a former finance minister elected this week as Japan's sixth prime minister in five years, tapped the 49-year-old Jun Azumi, a former parliamentary

Hong Kong shares look set to snap a four-day winning streak on Friday with cyclicals leading losses after the Hang Seng Index ran into stiff resistance at around 21,000, with investors cautious ahead of fresh United States employment data. Fears of the United States slipping into recession and the lingering euro zone crisis have combined

Most Finns think the sole Nordic euro member state should not back loans to Greece under a new bailout package, an opinion poll showed on Friday. According to a survey published in Talouselama magazine, 49% of Finns said Finland should totally opt out the 109 bln euro ($155.3 bln) rescue to Athens drawn up by

 * Report had said gov't spending was "out of control" * The chief of an independent Greek budget committee resigned on Thursday after the country's finance minister attacked the group for saying debt dynamics were 'out of control', sources said. The resignation may further complicate debt-choked Greece's already difficult negotiations with its international lenders about

European bankers and politicians leapt to defend the region's banks on Thursday, rejecting an International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimate that they need 200 billion euros ($290 billion) in new capital to reflect sovereign debt losses. IMF chief Christine Lagarde's call on Saturday for mandatory capitalisation of European banks to prevent a world recession has reignited