U.S. shares are set to rise on Friday, after stress tests for U.S. banks sparked optimism about the sector's future, and ahead of April's non-farm payroll data. At 0818 GMT, futures for the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq were up between 0.3 and 0.7 percent. Wall Street stocks slid on Thursday as investors took

U.S. regulators told top banks on Thursday to raise $74.6 billion to build a capital cushion officials hope will restore faith in financial firms and set a course out of the deepest recession in decades. Within minutes of release of the bank "stress test" results, which showed smaller capital needs than once feared, several of

Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), ordered by the government to find $33.9 billion of capital, said on Thursday it planned to sell assets and issue more common stock to cover the shortfall. The capital-raising, half of which will come from common stock issuance, was announced after the government concluded that the largest U.S. bank faced

Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), the world's biggest automaker, forecast a much deeper-than-expected annual loss of $8.6 billion as sales tumble, keeping dozens of its factories underused. Toyota booked a $6.9 billion loss for the January-March fourth quarter and cut its annual dividend for the first time since at least 1994, when it changed its reporting

Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said he expects more regulatory scrutiny from around the world and the company is paying more attention to the way it approaches certain business issues as a result of the attention. But Schmidt told reporters it had not crossed his mind to recuse himself from the board of Apple

Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it will buy computer game designer BigPark Inc for an undisclosed amount, as it pushes its strategy of producing exclusive games for its Xbox entertainment system. Microsoft has already been working with Vancouver, Canada-based BigPark over the past year on a game for the Xbox, but has so far announced

Shares climbed on Friday and the dollar slipped slightly after stress tests on U.S. banks produced no big shocks, but stocks sought a positive surprise from U.S. employment data later to keep the rally going. Crude prices climbed towards $58 a barrel, heading for weekly gains of more than 8 percent on hopes that demand

Part-nationalised lender Royal Bank of Scotland posted a small first quarter loss as strong growth at its investment banking arm mitigated the impact of impairment losses and credit market writedowns totalling 5 bln pounds. Britain's second biggest bank by market value, now 70 percent owned by the government, made a loss of 44 million pounds