Category: News Wire

Billions of pounds was wiped onto European markets on Monday after eurozone finance ministers agreed to lend Spain up to €100bn to shore up its struggling banks, relieving markets that had feared a fiscal collapse in the country.

The gap between men’s and women’s pensions has narrowed in the past few years, according to a survey by the Prudential.

Small businesses have had nearly half of rejected applications for bank lending overturned by using an independently monitored appeals process, an official report has revealed.

The Treasury Select Committee has taken the drastic step of publishing a special report into the Government’s “defective” banking reforms to help the House of Lords hold the authorities to account.

More companies are successfully “spinning out” of UK universities, official figures show, as education institutions get better at identifying the commercial applications of innovation, but funding problems remain.

Crisis in the eurozone is hitting small companies’ confidence and cash flow, experts have warned, with European suppliers demanding cash up front for orders while exporters are being caught by customers delaying payment.

Bank of England policymakers will meet on Thursday to decide whether to change interest rates or to pump in more money through quantitative easing (QE).

Cancelling the Olympics in the event of a terrorist strike or natural disaster would cost the insurance industry as much as $5bn (£3bn), one leading insurer has estimated.

Proposals designed to stop taxpayers’ money being used to bail out failed banks will be unveiled by the European Commission later.

Britain’s banks are sitting on a £40bn black hole of undeclared losses that are preventing them from making vital loans to businesses and households.

The Nasdaq stock exchange is to take the first steps to compensating shareholders who invested in the disastrous Facebook flotation, according to reports.

Spain’s economy minister has dismissed talk of it seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as “senseless”.

Shareholders in Royal Bank of Scotland will never recover the money they lost in the wake of the lender’s collapse more than three years ago, according to the taxpayer-backed bank’s chairman.

Greece handed 18 billion euros (14.39 billion pounds) to its four biggest banks on Monday, the finance ministry said, allowing the stricken lenders to regain access to European Central Bank funding.