Category: World

NEW YORK, October 13, 2008 (AFP) – US banking giant Morgan Stanley on Sunday was trying to salvage a nine-billion-dollar deal to sell 21 percent of its capital to Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, The New York Times said Sunday. Negotiations between the two banks amid the current global market turmoil were seen as crucial […]

MANILA, October 13, 2008 (AFP) – There are few countries in the world where you will not find a Filipino worker.Even in tiny Iceland, one of the countries hardest hit by the financial crisis, there were 1,411 at last count. At any given time, about 10 percent of the Philippines’ 90 million population is hard […]

SEOUL, October 13, 2008 (AFP) – South Korea’s government said Monday it will allow conglomerates and other non-banking firms to buy a bigger stake in local banks to ease privatisation and guard against the global financial crisis. Under a law to be submitted to parliament next month, the conglomerates — known as chaebol — and […]

BERLIN, October 13, 2008 (AFP) – Germany was to unveil Monday a 470-billion-euro rescue package to save the country’s banks from collapse, government sources said, after European leaders hammered out a common approach at a high-stakes weekend summit. Government sources in Europe’s biggest economy said that the package would include around 70 billion euros (95 […]

WASHINGTON, October 13, 2008 (AFP) – The United States is ready to buy equity in a “broad array” of financial institutions, the Treasury’s pointman on a 700 billion dollar bank bailout, Neel Kashkari, said Monday. “We are designing a standardized program to purchase equity in a broad array of financial institutions,” Kashkari said in a […]

WASHINGTON, October 11, 2008 (AFP) – The International Monetary Fund said Saturday it was ready to lend to countries in need of capital, as the 15 eurozone economies and Britain redied a Paris summit to seek a joint response to the global financial crisis. “Using its emergency procedures, the Fund stands ready to quickly make […]

CANNES, October 12, 2008 (AFP) – A golden age for television beckons as established TV companies go head on with the Internet and other new digital media platforms to woo audiences worldwide.And with a fast growing variety of new forms of audiovisual entertainment being rolled out for audiences of all ages, viewers are firmly in […]

PARIS, October 12, 2008 (AFP) – European leaders opened a summit in Paris on Sunday to try to agree on decisive measures to confront the global financial crisis. President Nicolas Sarkozy predicted that “an ambitious, coordinated” plan would emerge from the meeting held nearly a month after the collapse of US investment giant Lehman Brothers […]

WASHINGTON, October 11, 2008 (AFP) – Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday that the US government planned to invest directly in US banks to prevent them from failing, expanding the focus of the government’s 700-billion-dollar rescue plan. “We’re going to do it as soon as we can do it and do it effectively,” Paulson said […]

WASHINGTON, October 11, 2008 (AFP) – The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank opened their annual meetings Saturday in the midst of global financial chaos that has governments racing to find the means to tame it. The meetings follow Wall Street’s worst week on record and a pledge by the Group of Seven major […]

PARIS, October 10, 2008 (AFP) – While governments worldwide have not yet agreed on a solution to fix the current global economic crisis, nearly all agree on the cause of the problem: the large bonuses awarded to executives.Bankers’ bonuses have come under scrutiny as taxpayers money is being used to bail out ailing financial institutions. […]

PARIS, October 10, 2008 (AFP) – Businesses needing cash by the end of the month or students seeking a loan for this academic year can expect a hard time at the bank despite blockbuster steps this week to burst the credit dam.The official onslaught — huge bank bailouts, savings protection, floods of central bank money […]