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Oil fell more than 6 percent to around $47 a barrel on Monday, depressed by a rising U.S. dollar and growing caution about the pace of any economic recovery and its impact on oil demand.

World stocks fell on Wednesday, stepping back from the previous session's three-month high, and the low-yielding yen firmed as news of job cuts at Swiss bank UBS and weak U.S. and Chinese data fanned economic concerns. UBS warned of a first-quarter loss of nearly 2 billion Swiss francs and said it would cut a further 8,700 jobs, weighing on other banking shares.

BNP Paribas will abandon its attempts to buy the assets of Fortis if shareholders of the stricken Dutch-Belgian group reject the latest revised deal this month, BNP's chief executive said.

A Belgian court ruled on Friday that all Fortis investors were eligible to vote on its break-up, boosting French bank BNP Paribas' chances of buying Fortis assets.

A pending asset sale and a clean bill of health from its financial regulator has calmed fears Barclays will need to raise cash, and backed up the bank's pledge to emerge as a victor from the financial crisis.

Fortis was set on Wednesday to postpone a shareholder vote on the sale of its former banking arm to BNP Paribas, casting fresh doubt over whether it can complete the deal.

J.P. Morgan Securities forecast global wholesale and investment banks to incur additional pretax writedowns of $17 billion for the rest of 2009 to reach mark-to-market valuations of structured credit assets.

Fortis NV (FOR.BR: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said it has a viable future as an insurance group on Tuesday after plunging to a 28 billion euro ($37 billion) net loss in 2008 on the state takeover of its troubled banking activities.

The euro slipped against the dollar on Wednesday after a closely-watched survey showed German corporate sentiment fell to a record low, while world stocks inched up after hitting a 5-1/2 week high the previous day.

The Paris prosecutor's office has launched a preliminary investigation to see if BNP Paribas provided misleading information about investments in a fund buying Madoff-related products, a newspaper said on Saturday.

Goldman Sachs and a parade of major European banks, including Deutsche Bank , France's Societe Generale and the UK's Barclays , were major beneficiaries of more than $90 billion of money paid out by AIG in the first three-and-a-half months after its bailout by the U.S. government last September.

World stocks rose on Tuesday after three days of consecutive declines knocked them to 6-year lows, while government bonds slipped as fears grew governments may need to issue huge debt to fund economic stimulus packages.

Japan's Nikkei average struck a 26-year low on Monday and other Asian markets slipped on worries about the fate of General Motors and U.S. banks, while the yen edged up in a slight reversal of its broad slide.

European Union finance ministers are set to back a call from the International Monetary Fund to double its funds to $500 billion to fight the global financial crisis, a document showed on Monday.

The Belgian state and France's BNP Paribas have reached a deal Saturday to sell financial group Fortis, the largest bank in Belgium and the Netherlands until the global financial crisis, according to the associated press reports.

Intel Corp will develop its low-cost chips for ultra-small laptops with Taiwan's TSMC for a range of electronic devices, helping both firms expand into new markets amid a deepening global recession.

U.S. manufacturing shrank at a less severe pace last month and consumer spending bounced back in January, data showed on Monday, but the improvement was likely a blip amid a rapidly deteriorating economy.

and would likely continue to worsen for the time being. Japan has been hit particularly hard by the global slump, triggered by the U.S. housing market meltdown, due to its heavy dependence on exports and chronically weak domestic consumption. Crude inventories in the United States, the world's top consumer, fell slightly last week on lower imports and higher demand, the U.S. Energy Information...

World stocks rose from the previous day's three-month low on Thursday, while the dollar and government bonds fell, as some European corporate quarterly results were better than the most pessimistic expectations. Nestle the world's biggest food group, beat forecasts with underlying sales growth of 8.3 percent in 2008 and it was cautiously upbeat for 2009. BNP Paribas

Oil in New York fell to around $37 a barrel on Tuesday as bleak economic indicators turned the focus back to the worldwide slump in demand, outweighing lower supplies due to OPEC cutbacks.

At the close of Thursday's trading, European shares closed at 1.5 percent lower with banks hit by doubts about the U.S. government plan to boost the financial system.

Societe Generale said on Friday that Bear Stearns executive Michel Peretie will become the French bank's Corporate & Investment banking unit in the third quarter of this year.

The finance arm of Ford Motor Co. plans to sell $5.3 billion of car-loan bonds as investor demand increases for asset-backed securities, according Bloomberg.

An internal investigation by Societe Generale into a massive trading loss blamed on a single trader has found controls at the French bank lacked depth, a report published by the bank showed on Wednesday

European shares rose on Monday as gains in British banks and oil stocks helped investors recover some of the sharp losses suffered in the last session.

Last week it was revealed that Societe Generale had lost 4.9 billion euros due to the unauthorised trading of alleged rogue trader Jerome Kerviel.

France stepped up efforts to restore confidence in the banking system as Societe Generale faced tough questions on Friday over why it failed to prevent the biggest financial dealing scandal in history.

A massive fraud by a junior rogue trader has punched a $7 billion hole in the finances of French bank Societe Generale, leaving its credibility in tatters and forcing it to get emergency cash. France's central bank and government scrambled to shore up confidence in the banking system after Societe Generale, France's second-biggest bank, said on Thursday it had been the victim of massive and exceptional fraud resulting in losses of 4.9 billion euros.

BHP Billiton has brought in more banks to help it find the $70 billion it needs to fund its planned takeover of Rio Tinto, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported.