Britain launched a scheme on Wednesday to help small and medium-sized businesses refinance up to 20 billion pounds ($29.2 billion) of debt to stop cash-starved firms going bust. Economists and industry figures welcomed the steps to getting credit flowing again, but said the scheme was not a panacea for an economy heading into recession. The
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Britain's leading share index slipped early on Wednesday as heavyweight HSBC fell on concerns of capital increase and dividend cut though oil producers boosted by firmer crude lent support. By 0844 GMT, the FTSE 100 was down 40.98 points, or 0.9 percent, at 4,358.17, on course for extending its losses to a sixth straight session.
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Yahoo Inc named Autodesk Inc Chairman Carol Bartz as CEO, but Wall Street questioned whether the software executive has the experience needed to turn around the Internet media company. While Bartz is a Silicon Valley veteran with a reputation for being a tough but fair manager, shareholders of Yahoo had hoped for a chief executive
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HSBC Holdings is likely to halve its dividend and may need to raise up to $30 billion in a rights issue, according to leading analysts, sending shares in Europe's biggest bank skidding on Wednesday. Morgan Stanley said the bank's earnings will fall this year and its relative capital position is not as strong as in
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Britain launched a scheme on Wednesday to guarantee billions of pounds of loans to small and medium-sized companies as pressure grows on the government to fight a deepening recession. Business minister Peter Mandelson said he hoped the loan guarantees would help businesses to refinance up to 20 billion pounds ($29.2 billion) of existing loans, put
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By Christian Lowe Until the financial crisis hit, Shahin Kerimov sent money home from his job in Russia to his family in Azerbaijan. Now his wages have stopped, they have to wire him cash to buy food. Kerimov worked a tough, dirty job building apartment blocks in Moscow so he could make a better life
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Bulgaria has asked the European Union to provide some 400 million euros in aid to help the Balkan country ease its dependence on its sole gas supplier, Russia, the economy ministry said. Bulgaria wants to expand its sole gas storage facility and build pipeline links to neighbouring Greece and Romania quickly after a cut-off in
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The fundamental credit outlook for the banking sector of the United Arab Emirates is negative, reflecting growing pressures in the operating environment, which will weaken the financial fundamentals of UAE banks going forward, Moody's Investors Service said in its new Banking System Outlook on the UAE. Key factors underlying Moody's negative outlook include the growing
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Info2cell.com, the leading mobile service application provider in the Middle East, has signed an agreement with top game and content developer, Maysalward R&D (MRD), as part of their current campaign to improve their Java game portfolio and offer more exciting games to their subscribers in the region. The new agreement gives Info2cell.com the advantage of
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Nokia announced that its Qt cross-platform user interface (UI) and application framework for desktop and embedded platforms will be available under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 license from the release of Qt 4.5, scheduled for March 2009. Previously, Qt has been made available to the open source community under the General Public
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