IBT Staff Reporter

Procter & Gamble Co, the world's top maker of household products, will consider brand acquisitions in China to shore up and expand its leading position among multinationals muscling into the booming but fractured domestic consumer goods market.

Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley plans to buy into China's Jutian Fund Management Co in a move to tap China's red-hot wealth management sector, sources close to the situation said on Wednesday.

Shares in Bank of Beijing doubled in their debut on Wednesday, lifted by strong investor interest in new shares and upbeat prospects for the domestic banking sector as the country's economy keeps growing strongly.

Toshiba Corp said on Wednesday it would sell a landmark building in Tokyo's Ginza district for 161 billion yen ($1.4 billion) to Tokyu Land Corp.

Asia's budget airlines are poised for huge growth, despite recent damaging crashes, as cheap fares and new planes lure millions of passengers who have more money to spend on travel and leisure.

Japan's Fujifilm Holdings Corp said on Wednesday it plans to shift its remaining digital camera production to China and cut an unspecified number of jobs as it restructures its struggling camera operations.

The Fed's "emergency" interest rate cut has reignited concerns that offering cheaper money as a solution to problems rooted in excessive lending and mispriced assets merely stores up problems for the future.

U.S. stocks rose on Wednesday, adding to the previous session's surge and lifting the Standard & Poor's 500 index by 1 percent, as investors bet the Federal Reserve's aggressive rate cut would help prevent an economic slowdown.

Morgan Stanley on Wednesday said third-quarter profit fell as the summertime freeze in mortgage and corporate loan markets forced the bank to mark loans down by $940 million, but shares held their own on optimism that financial markets may be starting to revive.

China went on a charm offensive on Wednesday to convince a skeptical world its products are safe, as a new poll in the United States found 78 percent of Americans were worried about the safety of Chinese goods.

One in three Americans expects a U.S. recession in the next year, and less than a quarter think home prices will rise, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Shares in embattled British bank Northern Rock tumbled 20 percent to an all-time low on Wednesday as speculation of a cut-price takeover bid combined with stake sales from two investors stoked concerns over its future.

Shares in European banks rose strongly on Wednesday, driven by relief over a half-percentage point cut in U.S. interest rates, even though some analysts say the credit crunch which has battered stocks is far from over.

The dollar rose from a 15-year low against a basket of currencies on Wednesday as investors bet Federal Reserve's interest rate cut on Tuesday will help boost a slowing U.S. economy.

Consumer prices unexpectedly dipped 0.1 percent last month and new home construction hit a 12-year low, data on Wednesday showed, underlining concerns about the country's economic outlook. August consumer prices were pushed lower by slumping energy costs and posted their first decline since October, the Labor Department said, while core inflation rose as expected.

Deutsche Telekom's mobile phone division, T-Mobile, said on Wednesday it won a deal to sell Apple's iPhone and said the price would be 399 euros ($558), as reported last week by Reuters.

General Mills Inc. on Wednesday reported a rise in quarterly earnings that matched a better-than-expected view the company gave earlier this month, helped by a move to reduce the size of cereal boxes and charge consumers more per ounce.

Indian communists are not expected to budge on a nuclear deal with the United States, left leaders said.

Global equities rallied on Wednesday after an aggressive U.S. rate cut allayed fears that a credit crunch which has plagued markets could drag the U.S. economy into recession, but the dollar suffered a blow. The dollar struck a 15-year low against a basket of currencies after the Fed rate cut eroded the yield appeal of the U.S. currency. The weakness of the dollar pushed gold prices to 16-month highs.

Top U.S. food companies, worried recent import scares may turn away customers, launched a plan on Tuesday to add teeth to existing safety guidelines and increase funding for bare-bones federal regulators.

Plans to build the world's longest golf course, across 1,200 km (750 miles) of treeless desert, received a welcome boost on Wednesday when the Australian government offered seed funding for the venture.

India's nascent $30-million gaming industry is set to grow to $700 million in the next five years, driven by global companies that are pushing new generation gaming consoles in the Indian market, industry watchers said.

Toymaker Mattel Inc's recent recalls involved toys that had nearly 200 times the amount of lead in paint as allowed by U.S. law, the company said in a letter released to a congressional subcommittee on Tuesday.

Google Inc said on Tuesday it is testing a new interactive service that lets advertisers measure users' responses in advanced ways using video or images on Google's vast base of affiliated Web sites.

General Motors Corp would give new union members 401(k)-style retirement plans instead of traditional pensions for the first time under a proposed United Auto Workers contract, Bloomberg News said on its Web site, citing people with knowledge of the talks.

Banks have always lent out more than their clients have on deposit but just once in a while savers lose trust and demand all their money back, exposing one of the optical illusions at the heart of finance.

Stock futures pointed to a higher opening on Wall Street on Wednesday, as shares continue to rally following the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate cut that eased fears over the outlook for the economy.

Oil rose above $82 a barrel on Wednesday, closing in on a record hit the previous day after the U.S. Federal Reserve's interest rate cut raised expectations of still robust energy demand in the world's top consumer.

The Federal Reserve's move to slash interest rates by a half-percentage point signals that Chairman Ben Bernanke, fearing broad damage from recent market turmoil, preferred to risk doing too much rather than too little, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition.