IBT Staff Reporter

HSBC's private banking business has been little hit by the ongoing credit crisis, the head of the bank's private banking business, Chris Meares, told a Swiss newspaper.

European Union finance ministers and central bankers agreed on Saturday to step up co-operation among themselves to improve their handling of cross-border financial crises.

Three years after mutual funds first started disclosing how they vote on proposals at company meetings, investors are still struggling to get a clear picture on where their funds stand on key corporate issues.

At a time when a CEO of a large U.S. company is likely to earn in one day what the average worker does in a year, an investment adviser takes the income-disparity controversy a few steps further in Are the Rich Necessary?

Shares of Macy's rose as much as 4 percent on Friday as an options analyst cited renewed speculation that the department store operator could be ripe for a takeover.

Electronics retailer RadioShack Corp will start selling video-game software in its stores, a Citigroup analyst said on Friday.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan sharply criticizes President George W. Bush's administration and Republican congressional leaders in his memoir for putting political imperatives ahead of sound economic policies, several newspapers reported on Friday.

Suits behind the scenes of New York Fashion Week

The firestorm that has blazed through August is expected to last well into 2008.

Wall Street expects Federal Reserve policy-makers to cut interest rates next Tuesday to help ease a global credit squeeze, a much anticipated event that spurred stock prices higher this week and could boost them next week.

Leftist rebels behind this week's crippling bomb attacks on Mexican gas and oil pipelines said they are acting in self-defense against government aggression.

Mexico's Congress approved a landmark tax overhaul on Friday, handing President Felipe Calderon a major legislative victory and Mexico its biggest economic reform in a decade.

A day after President George W. Bush cited enough progress in Iraq to justify U.S. troop reductions, the White House told Congress on Friday that Iraqi leaders had failed to meet half of their key goals.

Flash memory makers, whose products are used in some some of the most popular consumer electronics devices - including cell phones, video cameras and digital music players - are are once again in the sights of federal prosecutors.

Barclays won shareholder support today for its €62 billion (£42 billion) bid to acquire ABN Amro, the Dutch bank, but said that it was not committed to a deal at any price.

Stocks edged up slightly on Friday as expectations of an interest rate cut off-set concerns of a weakening U.S. housing market.

Italy may soon become Europe's next frontier for solar energy as new incentives prompt investors to bet on higher returns than in Germany, which has less sun but is currently the hub of a growing global market.

Alcatel-Lucent's revenue warning is raising worries about weaker U.S. wireless network spending, which could also hurt other communication equipment makers such as Nortel Networks Corp.

Shares of Northern Rock Plc's plunged after the mortgage lender said it was unable to line up short-term loans from other financial institutions, and received emergency funding from the Bank of England.

The dollar edged up against the yen on Friday but remained near a record low against the euro as consumers braced for what is expected to be the first reduction in U.S. interest rates in four years next week.

Oil fell on Friday after supply concerns and tight inventories pushed prices to a record above $80 a barrel for the third consecutive day.

Shares of U.S. new home builder Hovnanian Enterprises rose nearly 10 percent on Friday amid an ongoing housing downturn on buzz about a weekend sale which starts today.

DigitalGlobe, provider of imagery for Google Inc.'s interactive mapping program Google Earth, said a new high-resolution satellite will boost the accuracy of its satellite images and flesh out its archive.

Deutsche Telekom has clinched an exclusive deal with Apple Inc to sell the coveted iPhone in Germany, an industry source told Reuters.

Your mobile phone may be one of the last spots around that's relatively free of advertising -- but not for long.

India's Mahindra & Mahindra has decided not to bid for Ford Motor Co's Land Rover and Jaguar brands, the Economic Times reported on Friday, citing investment banking and industry sources.

Bank of America sold 230 billion yen ($2 billion) of global bonds on Friday, sources said, joining a handful of major banks that have sought to raise cash in Japan's stable credit markets.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Friday that it will take time to work through the problems contributing to current financial market turmoil but expressed confidence U.S. growth will not be derailed.

Stocks were little changed on Friday as weakness in semiconductor makers after a broker downgrade of Intel Corp was offset by strength in energy producers.