IBT Staff Reporter

Wealthy people who have stashed cash in undeclared accounts in Switzerland and other offshore centers may now seek ways to legitimize their money after Berne and other tax haven governments relaxed bank secrecy laws.

More spending will give only a brief sugar high if G20 nations fail to clean up their banks, the World Bank said on Friday as economic powers struggled to agree a response to the worst downturn in decades.

Citigroup Inc may benefit from a push to install more directors with financial industry experience after a board heavy with Fortune 500 chief executives oversaw a disastrous push into risky debt.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said late on Friday that OPEC ministers should take into account the harm high oil prices can do to the global economy when they meet in Vienna this Sunday to discuss whether to carry out another oil production cut.

Investors are dubious that Wall Street's best week since November means the stock market has found a bottom.

It pays to communicate but Corporate America is doing less and less of it with investors as the U.S. economy falls deeper into recession, undermining market confidence in the process, a new study showed.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it will meet on April 8 to consider whether to propose short sale price test rules, which could include reinstating the so-called uptick rule.

Congress has begun to draft a bill that will require companies like Google to warn its users beforehand of its ad-tracking activity in a bid to protect users’ privacy rights.

Video streaming Web site Hulu.com is the latest website to catch on the social networking trend online. The site celebrated its one-year anniversary on Thursday by launching a new social networking feature on its site that makes it easier for users to interact with the site and shares videos with their friends.

On March 13, Discover Financial Services announced a $1.2 billion investment from the Treasury Department after the credit card issuer transformed itself into a bank-holding company giving it access to government support.

Lawyers for jailed swindler Bernard Madoff argued for his release pending sentencing and a list of assets put he and his wife's net worth between $823 million and $826 million, according to court papers filed on Friday.

Ford Motor Co has granted Chief Executive Alan Mulally options to buy 5 million shares in the automaker under a long-term incentive plan, it said in a U.S. regulatory filing on Friday.

General Motors Corp is recalling 276,729 passenger vehicles to correct a problem in certain cars that could cause them to roll when parked, the U.S. government said on Friday.

Museums in Philadelphia and New York including the Metropolitan Museum of Art are cutting stores, jobs and salaries as their endowments have been pounded by dwindling donations, government aid and financial markets.

Roche Holding AG finally has a deal to acquire the portion of Genentech Inc it does not already own, but the Swiss pharmaceutical group still has work to do in securing the biotechnology company's top talent.

U.S. municipalities, strapped for cash as the recession decimates revenues, are stepping up sales of everything from old police cars, helicopters and bicycles to confiscated jewelry and slot machines in an effort to reduce swollen deficits.

U.S. consumer pessimism receded in March, according to a survey released on Friday, while the trade deficit narrowed in January to its smallest in more than six years as imports fell amid collapsing domestic demand.

This week the South African government took over a farm under a controversial new policy of taking back unproductive previously allocated to blacks as part of a land redistribution programme.

Lawyers for Bernard Madoff argued that a U.S. court erred in jailing him pending sentencing and will ask an appeals court to reinstate his bail and house arrest, according to court papers filed on Friday.

A longtime banking executive who sold his company to a Bank of America Corp predecessor is calling on other shareholders to oust the embattled Kenneth Lewis as chairman of the largest U.S. bank.

On March 13 Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) spokesperson announced that the three foreign aid workers held hostage in war-torn Darfur are ‘in good health’ and unharmed.

Some Federal Reserve insiders are breaking ranks in alarm over action by the U.S. central bank to tackle the credit crisis, but this unusually blunt display of dissent will not force a reversal in policy.

Oil fell toward $46 a barrel on Friday, as bearish demand forecasts outweighed the potential for OPEC agreeing to further production cuts at its weekend meeting.

Credit protection costs for Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc on Friday traded at a level more appropriate for a borderline junk-rated company or emerging market nations such as Turkey or Peru after Berkshire lost its AAA credit rating.

A man wanted for rape abducted his 5-year-old daughter in a light airplane and tried to smash it into a busy shopping center in a Brazilian city, missing it but killing them both, police said on Friday.

Insolvent German chipmaker Qimonda will continue talks with potential investors beyond March and will reduce production to standby-mode by the end of this month, according to its insolvency administrator.

Widely used methods of automated forecasting for production and inventory control contribute to the severity of recessions. We describe an approach to forecasting that should reduce the damage caused by the use of current statistical packages when encountering a substantial change in business conditions.

NASA said there is a high probability of sending its shuttle Discovery to the international space station on Sunday after delaying it for over a month while they fixed a fuel leak.

Surfers on the Internet are at increasing risk from governments and corporations tracking the sites they visit to build up a picture of their activities, the founder of the World Wide Web said on Friday.