INVESTMENT

The Dutch Royal family is trying to return to their normal routines following Prince Johan Friso's avalanche accident on February 17th. Queen Beatrix, Johan Friso's mother, returned to her royal duties at the beginning of March, attending a meeting with the Prime Minister, and later opening up the new Explosive Ordnance Barracks in Soesterberg.

Major indexes across Europe were down Tuesday on negative news regarding an expected slowdown in Chinese economic growth.

French Queen Marie Antoinette -- who historically bears the brunt of having uttered the four words, summing up the obliviousness of the French monarchy to the poverty of the peasants, prior to the French revolution -- may have found her modern day avatar in the Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad. Upon learning that her subjects had no bread to eat during the famine that occurred in France due to the mismanagement of treasury, Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI of France, famously remarked: Let them ...

Goldman Sachs Group Inc has started reducing employees in the trading and investment banking divisions, it has been reported.

Privately held Zayo Group LLC agreed to buy rival AboveNet Inc, a provider of broadband connections to big companies and carriers, for about $2.2 billion to tap into the galloping demand for fast data services.

Asma al-Assad, the 38-year-old wife of Syrian regime leader Bashir al-Assad and a former investment banker, will likely join 114 other Syrians on a list of sanctioned individuals by the European Union, freezing her assets to preventing shopping, travel and other commerce in foreign countries; meanwhile, reports emerge of Assad's emails to friends where she boasts of the power of the Syrian regime, and that she is the real dictator.

Home prices in nearly half of China's major cities fell in February from the year-ago period, as Beijing showed its determination to tame the property market.

Nigeria's super rich are no strangers to conspicuous consumption, and there's no better way to flaunt your wealth than by buying a brand new European sports car.

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) downloaded $45 billion, to borrow a phrase from the Financial Times, to its shareholders Monday, lifting both its own stock and the already buoyant broader market.

The conclusion is that the equity market is cheap relative to earnings. Hence, the market is priced to absorb a potential softening in earnings rather than being priced to perfection.

The European Commission is widening its regulatory sweep to include "shadow" banking, heralding new controls over the sprawling and largely unchartered 46 trillion euro ($61 trillion) sector blamed for helping trigger the financial crisis.

When the late Steve Jobs had a will, he often got his way. That's why Apple hasn't paid a dividend since 2005.

U.S. and European investment banks may face headline risk again from credit ratings downgrades by Moody's Investors Service Inc. in the coming weeks, Nomura Securities warned Monday.

The owners of the New York Mets settled a lawsuit Monday with Irving Picard, trustee for victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, for $162 million, avoiding a potential costly trial.

The head of the Federal Reserve's New York branch said the U.S. economy isn't in the clear yet, but recent data have been a bit more upbeat, giving investors renewed hope of a fresh round of quantitative easing.

Apple, whose stock is currently trading at $585, has announced that it will be holding a conference call on Monday morning to discuss the company's plans for its approximately $100 billion in cash reserves.

Colombia was one of the best performing emerging markets last year, growing by around 6 percent, and it should continue to do well over the coming years. However there are three reasons to think that the current pace of growth is unsustainable according to Capital Economics.

Apple Inc. said it would host a conference call on Monday morning to discuss the outcome of discussions about its cash balance as investors clamor for a return from its massive holdings.

To date, the 2012 Republican Party presidential-nomination process has been dominated by a faction that wants to nominate a conservative, but the least conservative candidate remains the GOP’s strongest: Mitt Romney.

According to market figures released by research firm IDC, China is bound to overtake the U.S. in smartphone shipments by the end of 2012, becoming the leading market. IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker forecast that China’s smartphone market will climb from 18.2 percent in 2011 to 20.7 percent in 2012, while U.S.’ market would drop from 21.3 to 20.6 percent over the same timeframe.

Though there are signs of recovery, the debt crisis in the developed markets and rising oil prices add to the risk factors looming large over the global economy.