IBT Staff Reporter

Although the U.S. economy is expected to return to growth later this year, there is a danger of a second recession if monetary easing and a weak dollar leads to increased inflation expectations, a report said on Wednesday.

Swiss Re , the world's second-larger reinsurer, said on Thursday it plans to cut 10 percent of its workforce over the next 12 months in a bid to cut costs by 400 million Swiss francs ($349.6 million) by 2010.

Asian stocks shot to a three-month high on Thursday, building a three-day rally on hopes the U.S. economy has bottomed, while the euro was firm before a European Central Bank meeting at which rates may be cut for the last time in a while.

Shares of HSBC vaulted over 15 percent in Hong Kong in their biggest daily advance in five months on Thursday, joining a global bank rally spurred by encouraging U.S. data and an expected easing of accounting rules.

ArcelorMittal , the world's largest steelmaker, said on Thursday it had extended its credit lines by $1.2 billion until 2012, bringing the total amount of such refinancing to $6 billion.

Netflix Inc on Thursday said it delivered its two billionth movie and gave the lucky recipient of the milestone DVD a complimentary lifetime membership.

Maurice Greenberg said he was not responsible for problems at American International Group since they occurred after he left, the Wall Street Journal reported citing an interview with the former chief of the company.

Shares of HSBC vaulted more than 10 percent to a one-month high on Thursday, feeding off a rally in Wall Street banks, spurred by encouraging U.S. homes sales and an expected loosening in accounting rules.

Asian stocks rose on Thursday, with investors seeing a sliver of hope the U.S. economy has bottomed, while the euro edged up before a European Central Bank meeting at which rates may be cut for the last time in a while.

The U.S. Justice Department has opened about 100 criminal investigations into wealthy American clients of the Swiss bank UBS AG , the New York Times said, citing a person briefed on the matter.

U.S. auto sales fell 37 percent in March, a smaller-than-expected drop that encouraged hope that the world's largest car market is nearing a bottom after a freefall that has pulled the industry into a deepening crisis.

China is encouraging people to pay respects to the martyrs of the Communist revolution on a new website set up ahead of a traditional holiday to remember the dead, state media said on Thursday.

Accounting giant KPMG was hit with a billion-dollar lawsuit on Wednesday over claims its grossly negligent audits helped trigger the collapse of a top subprime mortgage lender at the start of the U.S. housing crisis.

World leaders will pledge to regulate major hedge funds for the first time and set up a new oversight board to monitor the global financial system, according to a draft of the G20 communique.

North Korea has begun fuelling a long-range rocket and could launch it by the weekend, CNN said, with the United States and others promising punishment for a move they say violates U.N. resolutions.

World leaders are set to declare an end to unfettered capitalism at a G20 summit on Thursday after France and Germany demanded they act fast on promises to prevent a repeat of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.

Wikia Search, a community-led search engine, is now closed after a 15 month stint, citing a difficult economy.

Microsoft Corporation formally released a new server product from its Windows 2008 family with the addition of Windows Server 2008 Foundation, targeting the small business/SOHO segment of 15 users or less.

Although the U.S. economy is expected return to growth later this year, there is a danger of a second recession if monetary easing and a weak dollar leads to increased inflation expectations, a report said on Wednesday.

Accounting giant KPMG was hit with a billion-dollar lawsuit on Wednesday over claims its grossly negligent audits helped trigger the collapse of a top subprime mortgage lender at the start of the U.S. housing crisis.

U.S. auto sales fell 37 percent in March, a smaller-than-expected drop that encouraged hope the world's largest car market is nearing a bottom after a freefall that has pulled the industry into a deepening crisis.

Thousands of protesters clogged the streets of London's financial district on Wednesday. Hundreds of them battled with riot police in a brief but brutal spasm of violence, ending with 23 of them were arrested.

Massachusetts' securities regulators sued Fairfield Greenwich Group, a major feeder fund for Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, accusing the hedge fund of lying to investors and not exercising enough diligence over investments that were worth billions of dollars.

Honda Motor Co. is to cut U.S production in the coming month and will reduce salaries due to economic downturn in auto sales drop.

Changes to General Motors Corp's contract with the United Auto Workers union could save the automaker $1.1 billion or more in hourly labor costs, GM said in a report to the U.S. Treasury released on Wednesday.

Verizon Wireless hopes to roughly halve the number of cellphone operating systems that it needs to support in the next few years to help improve the time it takes to bring new technologies to customers.

It's unclear how big a role the mobile division will play under CEO Carol Bartz as it has been difficult to monetize so far.

US President Barrack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev committed to launch negotiations on a new nuclear arms treaty to reduce nuclear warheads on Wednesday, issuing a broader cooperation pact across a wide range of policy areas.

U.S. regulators have reached the closing phase of stress tests to gauge the health of the nation's top banks, and are bracing for a battle to get those firms to accept tough appraisals.