Wall Street stocks are set for a muted start to Wednesday trade as investors consolidate positions after the push to four-month highs, with crude oil trading at $64 a barrel helping ease inflation concerns.
Britain's FTSE 100 share index closed higher on Tuesday as a surge in the cost of base metals boosted miners such as Xstrata, while steelmaker Corus rose on bid talk and reassuring results from a rival.
Car rental company Hertz Global Holdings Inc. said on Friday it is planning an initial public offering of as much as $1 billion in common stock.
Big investors buying into baskets of commodities saw lower returns in the first half of this year, compared with a year ago, as oil generated slimmer gains and the search intensified for new strategies.
Istithmar PJSC, the international investment house based in the United Arab Emirates, Thursday announced an investment of US $100 million in a new financial services firm headed by Joseph Perella, a reputed former Morgan Stanley investment banker.
A group including Goldman Sachs agreed to buy Associated British Ports, Britain's largest ports group, for 2.5 billion pounds ($4.6 billion) on Wednesday, the latest in a string of UK port takeovers.
Online job site Monster Worldwide Inc. and four other companies on Monday disclosed investigations by U.S. authorities into executive stock options grants, widening a scandal that now involves some 40 companies.
Leading UK shares closed higher on Friday but finished the week with a moderate loss as the market's recent choppy trading pattern, sparked by inflation and interest rate jitters, persisted.
The Bush administration finally is on the verge of assembling a powerhouse economic team, headed by a Wall Street heavyweight able to set the terms for becoming its leader, after some 5-1/2 years in power.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. shares fell on Tuesday after Chief Executive Henry Paulson said he was leaving to become the U.S. treasury secretary, but investors say his heir apparent, Lloyd Blankfein, could continue the bank's winning ways.
The drop in oil and metal prices this week has raised fears that a speculative bubble in commodities is bursting, but giant U.S. fund manager PIMCO says fundamentals will hold up the asset class.
China Construction Bank Corp., one of the country's largest state banks, denied a newspaper report on Monday that it is in early talks with Bear Stearns Cos. that could lead to it taking a minority stake in the Wall Street investment bank.
A Merrill Lynch analyst, two Goldman Sachs employees and a worker at a plant that printed Business Week magazine have been charged in an insider trading scheme that netted more than $6.7 million, prosecutors said Tuesday.