IBT Staff Reporter

Japan's Olympus Corp has agreed to buy British keyhole surgery specialist Gyrus Group Plc for 935 million pounds ($1.92 billion) in cash to bolster its position in the medical tools market.

A Chinese anti-virus company has warned against free downloads of Ang Lee's steamy spy thriller, Lust, Caution, saying several hundred sites offering the service were embedded with viruses.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Japan's third-largest bank, posted a 30 percent drop in April-September profit, hit by falls in the share price of consumer loan affiliates and losses on subprime investments, but it kept its full-year forecast unchanged.

Temasek, the Singapore state investment agency, has rebuffed an approach from China's three leading banks for its 17 percent stake in UK-based Standard Chartered, a report said on Monday, sending shares in Standard Chartered more than 5 percent higher.

Picture having an Olympian view of millions of photos the world's photographers and cameraphone users have produced over the last day.

Swiss Re reported a shock 1.2 billion Swiss franc ($1.07 billion) writedown due to the subprime crisis, sending its shares down sharply and making it the first reinsurer to suffer a big, direct hit from the crisis.

The yen strengthened on Monday, as investors' appetite for risk was dented by worries of more trouble in the global financial sector and consequent falls in equity markets.

World stock markets fell on Monday, with European shares slipping into losing territory for the year in another tremor over the credit crunch, while Japan's yen gained as investors cut back on their riskier holdings.

The Dubai government agency that bought into Deutsche Bank this year said on Monday it was considering investing in U.S. financial services firms affected by the mortgage-market crisis.

BHP Billiton Chief Executive Marius Kloppers has told investors the firm is not adding a cash sweetener to its current all-share takeover proposal for mining rival Rio Tinto, a South African BHP shareholder said on Monday.

Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Gary Stern said on Monday he expected the U.S. housing market to weaken further because of a large pool of unsold homes. But employment and incomes were still rising, Stern said, and that would underpin consumption.

PayPal, the payments service arm of online auction leader eBay Inc, is set to release on Tuesday a convenient way for its customers to make payments on Web sites that don't accept PayPal directly.

Goldman Sachs & Co analysts downgraded Citigroup to sell and said the largest U.S. bank may have to write off $15 billion for debt losses over the next two quarters, and it placed it on Americas Sell List. The report came after Citigroup's own chief strategist upgraded the nation's banking sector, calling selling pressure overdone.

Stock futures fell on Monday after Goldman Sachs added Citigroup Inc to its sell list, citing prospects for more credit losses at the No. 1 U.S. bank.

Britain said it may offer financial help to potential rescuers of Northern Rock, even though this would need to be approved by the European Union, as it emerged proposals put forward so far were pitched low. Northern Rock shares tumbled over 20 percent to a new low on Monday after the bank said interest from potential suitors valued it at materially below Friday's share price.

U.S. officials' effort to talk up the dollar comes amid lower expectations in financial markets

The party set to win a big majority in Russia's parliamentary election next month has boiled down its central idea to two words: Vladimir Putin.

Pharmaceutical companies see U.S. regulators applying a tougher standard to some new medicines by looking for evidence they are better than drugs already on the market, officials told Reuters this week.

Grieving survivors and rescuers picked through the rubble left in the wake of a cyclone that battered Bangladesh as the death toll reached over 2,300 on Sunday and a government official declared the disaster a national calamity.

At least 17 people were killed by explosions in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities on Sunday, Iraqi police and officials said.

Rifle-toting Cambodian police arrested ex-Khmer Rouge President Khieu Samphan on Monday, the latest member of Pol Pot's inner circle to be detained by the U.N.-backed Killing Fields tribunal.

A methane explosion ripped through a mine in Ukraine's Donbass coalfield on Sunday, killing at least 63 miners and leaving 37 missing in underground shafts engulfed by fire and smoke.

Oil extended gains on Monday, nearing $95 a barrel as the dollar fell and some OPEC members pushed for action to stem their declining purchasing power.

U.S. light vehicle sales industrywide were likely to slip below 16 million vehicles next year as the housing market continues to slow through 2008, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross said on Sunday.

Siam Cement, Thailand's top industrial conglomerate, plans to invest $3.7 billion in a major petrochemical complex in southern Vietnam, state media reported on Monday.

AT&T Inc is trying to put together a bid for EchoStar Communications Corp before the end of the year, whetted by the satellite operator's recent stock dip, according to Barron's financial newspaper.

An OPEC summit ended on Sunday in sharp political division over whether to take action over the weak dollar, as heads of state vowed to keep providing Western consumers with an adequate supply of oil.

Three top investors in the automotive industry painted a grim picture on Sunday for the sector in 2008, with one executive predicting a possible slump in U.S. sales to levels not seen in 15 years. The weakest forecast is for a possible 9.4 percent decline. But all three -- Jerry York, an adviser to billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian; financier Wilbur Ross; and Thomas Stallkamp, a former Chrysler president -- were more pessimistic than many in the battered industry.

Asian stocks made a cautious advance on Monday following a recovery on Wall Street, with gains for oil prices shoring up demand for energy shares.