IBT Staff Reporter

Shares in UK banks rose on Monday on hopes of higher dividends and after the British government decided to nationalize stricken mortgage lender Northern Rock.

Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of Britain's Barclays Plc, has named Mark Bamford as head of global syndicate to replace Geert Vinken, who is retiring.

German real estate company Deutsche Euroshop is aiming for double-digit growth in annual earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to 2012, its chief executive was quoted as saying.

Swiss bank UBS AG is confident the 287 million pound ($560 million) rights issue it is underwriting for British mortgage lender Paragon will be successful, a source close to the bank said on Monday.

Walt Disney Co has reached a deal to more than double its stake in Indian TV and movie content maker UTV, the two firms said, underscoring the U.S. entertainment firm's efforts to expand globally.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that the decision to nationalise Northern Rock was the right move at the right time for the right reasons. Brown was speaking at a Downing Street briefing, after the news broke on Sunday that the struggling mortgage lender would be nationalized.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended his reputation for sound economic management on Monday in the face of mounting criticism over his decision to nationalize ailing bank Northern Rock after lending it 25 billion pounds ($49 billion). Brown helped transform the Labour Party in the 1990s by ditching an attachment to state ownership.

Alibaba Group, the Chinese Internet firm, will seek a stronger voice for its management team in Microsoft's talks to acquire Yahoo, Alibaba's largest shareholder, a source said on Monday. Based on the original agreement with Yahoo, which owns 39 percent of Alibaba, the Chinese company is in a very strong position to influence how shares would be transferred to any new owner, said the source, who is close to Alibaba.

French bank Societe Generale, at the centre of a huge trading scandal, began investigating trades executed by Jerome Kerviel months before his activities were exposed in January, the Financial Times reported.

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.

The dollar recovered in trade thinned by a U.S. market holiday on Monday, as investors locked in profits following the currency's worst weekly performance of the year so far.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown faced a political and public backlash on Monday after his decision to take ailing bank Northern Rock Plc into public ownership, the first UK nationalization since the 1970s.

Following the integration of Tata Group's five telecommunication subsidiaries - VSNL, VSNL International, Teleglobe, Tata Indicom Enterprise Business Unit and Cipris - under the Tata Communications brand name, Tata Communications has announced that it will inject $2 billion over the next three years to fuel its global expansion plans with specific focus on the new world of IP, MPLS, Ethernet, and managed services.

The market for KPO or Knowledge Process Outsourcing, which follows the success waves created by ITO (Information and Technology Outsourcing) in the 1980s and the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) in the 1990s, is expected to touch $10-17 billion by 2010 and India is well poised to grab a major share of the market, a research paper released by the global audit, tax and advisory services group KPMG has revealed.

A top executive of India's largest mobile services provider, Bharti Airtel, has expressed confidence that it will be difficult for rivals to emulate the success of his company and warned that intense competition will drive out new players from the market.

India's Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh said India is in a position to sustain economic growth of 9 percent despite a possible global slowdown and promised to keep inflation under control

Asian stocks, which have been jittery this year at any ill omen from the U.S. market, are likely to take note on Monday of Wall Street's latest fall, while investors continue to keep an eye out for bargains.

Kosovo Albanians declared independence on Sunday, confidently awaiting Western recognition for their state despite the anger its secession provoked in Serbia and Russia's warnings of fresh Balkan unrest.

Kosovo's parliament voted unanimously to separate from Serbia on Sunday. Members of parliament voted 109-0 for the action. Kosovo will seek to be recognized as a European country after being under United Nations control since 1999 following a civil war with Serbia.

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. said on Sunday that it will sell 30 billion yuan ($4.2 billion) of bonds to fund spending for building a cross-country pipeline and ethylene plants, according to a report.

The U.K. government will nationalize Northern Rock Plc bank after a bid by Virgin Group Ltd. was rejected, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said today. The government did not select either of two bids by a Virgin consortium and an in-house proposal.

Pakistan will be holding parliamentary elections on Monday amid escalating unrest and after eight years of military rule.

An explosion in downtown Mexico City near police headquarters on Friday could be a response from organized crime groups to recent drug arrests, said authorities after studying the facts.

The Amazon S3 Storage Service went down Friday morning causing companies to lose access their own data stored on the server.

Could a series of bleak economic reports signal recession?

Motorola's declining fortunes are sending shock waves through the wireless industry

Long walks just isn't going to cut it

A Chicago judge declared adventurer Steve Fossett dead five months after he disappeared during a short flight in Nevada.

The Guitar Hero franchise's next game will be released in June, featuring rock group Aerosmith.