The British government will have a big part in the country's banking sector for years to come but competition and choice for consumers must be maintained, finance minister Alistair Darling said on Friday. Britain has nationalised Northern Rock bank and taken majority stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group. "The government will
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Finance Minister Charilaos Stavrakis expressed satisfaction over figures for 2008, noting that the government succeeded in its aims which were to give the economy a boost to effectively overcome the first months of 2009 which have been burdened by the international economic crisis. Addressing a seminar on the international economic crisis and its effects on
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Britain's economy shrank even more abruptly than expected in the last three months of 2008 as construction output was revised sharply lower and firms ran down stocks at a record pace, official data showed on Friday. While the fall in inventories should boost the recovery when it comes, few analysts expect any return to growth
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Top Federal Reserve officials hinted on Thursday that the long U.S. economic downturn could be in its final stages, although the early stages of recovery will likely be far from stellar. Meanwhile, policy-makers showed a split on whether the Fed's current stance of aggressively pumping money into credit markets poses a major risk of stoking
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Apple Inc has scheduled its annual developers conference for the second week in June, with plenty of buzz surrounding its product plans. The company on Thursday announced the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference would be held June 8-12 in San Francisco. Apple will have more than 1,000 engineers on hand as it welcomes an expected 5,000
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Graphics chipmaker Nvidia Corp countersued Intel Corp for breach of contract on Thursday, alleging that Intel made misleading statements designed to undermine Nvidia's licensing rights. The suit seeks to terminate Intel's license to Nvidia's patents related to graphics processing and three-dimensional computing and comes in response to a related suit by Intel last month. Nvidia
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British Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged the G20 on Thursday to back a $100 billion expansion of trade finance to reverse a fall in exports and, with his Brazilian counterpart, called for a global trade agreement. "I'm going to ask the G20 summit next week to support a global expansion of trade finance to reverse
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Barack Obama will make his debut as president on the world stage next week with calls for global economies to use government spending to jumpstart growth and work on a reshaping of the chaotic financial system. The U.S. president's popularity will likely elicit a warm greeting Europeans when he travels to London for the summit
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Japan slipped to the brink of deflation, but tentative signs of economic improvement elsewhere and investor hopes for more steps to support a recovery helped Asian stocks rack up their biggest weekly gains in almost five months. Policymakers gathering at next week's Group of 20 meeting in London have another chance to develop plans to
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Australia rejected a $1.7 billion Chinese bid for OZ Minerals Ltd on Friday, saying one of its mines was close to a weapons-testing site, but invited state-owned Minmetals to restructure the deal. In a surprise move, Treasurer Wayne Swan said Australia would not approve the Chinese takeover unless it excluded OZ Minerals' prime Prominent Hill
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