Arabica coffee futures edged up on Friday and London cocoa inched lower, pressured by a firmer pound, as markets felt positive sentiment from the $1.1 trillion package agreed by world leaders to revive the global economy. Sugar futures were steady as the market consolidated after Thursday's rally. Coffee traders said arabicas edged up on investor
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Saudi Aramco has offered unusually high volumes of straight-run and cracked fuel oil in the past two months, due to an extended outage at its Ras Tanura refinery and upgrading tests at Rabigh, industry sources said on Friday. The state oil firm has offered an unprecedented eighth cargo of straight-run A960 fuel oil in the
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The euro fell against a broadly firming dollar on Friday, with investors displaying jitters ahead of key U.S. employment data which are expected to show the U.S. economy suffered deep job losses in March. U.S. non-farm payrolls, due at 1230 GMT, are forecast to show a fall of around 650,000 jobs in March to take
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European shares were lower at midday on Friday in a choppy session, on track to snap a three-day winning streak, as investors await U.S. unemployment data. By 1036 GMT, the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index of top shares was down 0.2 percent at 780.06 points, having earlier been up as much as 784.98 points and down
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Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan criticised Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Friday, increasing doubts that Ankara will back him to become NATO's next chief. In NATO member Turkey's strongest public criticism of Rasmussen since he became frontrunner to succeed Dutch diplomat Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as the alliance's secretary-general, Erdogan said he took
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Stock futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Friday, as investors were poised to book a portion of their recent hefty gains ahead of key U.S. monthly jobs data. * At 4:11 a.m. EDT, futures for the S&P 500 were down 0.5 percent, Dow Jones futures were down 0.5 percent and Nasdaq
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The struggling U.S. economy probably continued to bleed jobs at a rapid rate in March, continuing to drive up the jobless rate at a startling pace. Forecasters polled by Reuters expect nonfarm payrolls to register a decline of 650,000 for March, similar to the 651,000 shed in February. The 78 estimates ranged from down 522,000
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U.S. banks that have received government aid, including Citigroup Inc, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co, are considering buying toxic assets to be sold by rivals under the Treasury's $1,000 billion plan to revive the financial system, the Financial Times said. Citigroup was considering whether to take part in the plan as
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Google Inc may be in talks to buy internet start-up Twitter, the free micro-blogging service that allows people to send short text messages to a network of friends, the TechCrunch website said late Thursday TechCrunch's article by Michael Arrington said the two companies are also considering working together on a Google real time search engine.
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Earnings, equity hit by investment losses During 2009, Moody's Investors Service has taken a number of mainly negative rating actions on European insurance groups, driven by a mixture of concerns including investment risk and knock-on effects on capitalisation and financial flexibility. Earnings prospects for Q1, and indeed for the rest of the year, already appear
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