GOLDMAN SACHS

Warren Buffett said out of control health care costs are a tapeworm limiting growth in an economy recovering only fitfully from the financial crisis.

NEW YORK, March 1 Reuters) - Warren Buffett said the U.S. economy has passed the worst of its troubles but faces an uneven recovery as consumers keep a tight rein on spending.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc's board has rejected demands from shareholders that the firm investigate recent compensation awards, recoup excessive compensation and reform pay practices.

American International Group Inc agreed to sell its Asian life insurance unit to Britain's Prudential Plc for about $35.5 billion, in a deal that would help the U.S. government get back billions of its bailout money, sources familiar with the matter said.

Britain's Prudential Plc plans to do a rights offering of about $20 billion to finance a $35.5 billion purchase of American International Group's Asian life insurance unit, a source familiar with the situation said on Sunday.

For executives at Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc, it pays to be just below the top.

Bank of America Corp's investment banking chief Thomas Montag was the company's highest paid executive in 2009, after the company assumed his contract as part of its acquisition of Merrill Lynch, according to the company's proxy filing on Friday.

The Federal Reserve expects the largest U.S. banks to make progress this year in overhauling their pay practices, while acknowledging that more dramatic changes may take longer to implement, a Fed official said on Thursday.

U.S. regulators are probing how Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs helped debt-stricken Greece arrange derivatives deals that critics say were used to disguise the size of its budget deficits.

The Federal Reserve is examining the role that Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs played in helping Greece arrange credit default swaps, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday.

The Obama administration said on Tuesday it is still committed to the Volcker rule to ban risky trading by banks, although Congress looks increasingly unlikely to adopt the rule as proposed.

Wall Street paid out $20.3 billion in bonuses in 2009, up 17 percent from a year earlier, New York State's comptroller said, as the financial industry recovered fitfully from a near meltdown.

Wall Street paid out $20.3 billion in bonuses in 2009, up 17 percent from a year earlier, New York State's comptroller said, as the financial industry recovered fitfully from a near meltdown.

Wall Street paid out $20.3 billion of bonuses in 2009, up 17 percent from a year earlier, New York State's comptroller said, as the financial industry recovered fitfully from a near meltdown.

Laboratory equipment maker Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc has offered $6 billion to buy Millipore Corp, according to a person familiar with the situation, in a deal that would increase its presence in the manufacture of biotech drugs.

Past deals by Greece and others to massage public deficits lacked transparency, a senior Goldman Sachs banker said, the first time it talked openly about financial instruments it and other banks sold.

Goldman Sachs has defended the cross-currency derivatives it conducted for Greece in 2001.

The head of Dutch ABP, the world's third-largest sovereign pension fund, has resigned over an investigation into a failed savings bank where he once sat on the board, ANP-Reuters said.

The Federal Reserve has continued to target its liquidity withdrawal for the banking system as conditions improve for Wall Street and prominent hedge funds take huge positions in financial institutions.

Societe Generale expects results to recover in 2010 with lower bad risk write-downs after posting weak fourth-quarter results and rattling markets last month with a profit warning.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc sued seven of its former private wealth management division executives for abruptly leaving the company to join rival Credit Suisse early this month, court documents show.