Indian officials on Thursday met with analysts from ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to argue for an upgrade in its sovereign rating, citing recent steps by the government to put the economy back on track, according to a report by Reuters.
Sudden changes in the volume of Google searches for finance-related terms could be an “early warning sign” of imminent stock market movements, showed a research study published on Thursday, in the latest attempt to correlate online behavioural patterns to the behaviour of financial market participants and trends.
Income inequality surged during the first two years of the economic recovery as the top 7 percent of Americans saw their average net worth increase by 28 percent between 2009 and 2011, while the wealth of the remaining 93 percent of the population steadily declined during the same period, according to a study by the Pew Research Centre.
Switzerland will renew restrictions on immigration from eight European countries starting from May, citing a steady increase in foreigners in the Alpine nation. The decision drew sharp criticism from EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton, who said it ran counter to agreements between Switzerland and the 27-member EU bloc.
China’s centrally-administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been given a 10 percent profit target for the rest of the year after growth figures in Q-1 fell short of an 8 percent estimate set by the State Council, reported Caixin Online on Wednesday.
Though the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) acknowledged the difficulties SOEs faced in the current economic climate, they urged companies to tighten their cash flow and speed up the disposal of non-performing assets.
Greece’s government intends to “exhaust every means available” to claim additional World War II reparations from Germany beyond a 1960 agreement, confirmed its Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos on Wednesday, in a move that could place further strains on its relations with Berlin, who have bore the largest part of Greece’s 240 billion euro rescue.
The U.S. government has sued Europe’s biggest drug maker Novartis for alleged healthcare fraud, accusing it of providing kickbacks to U.S. clinics to switch patients from generic drugs to the company’s brand-name product.
In a civil-fraud lawsuit filed on Tuesday, U.S. prosecutors said Novartis used a programme of rebates and discounts to boost the sales of its immunosuppressant drug, Myfortic, in a scheme that resulted in Medicare and Medicaid paying out “tens of millions of dollars” in reimbursements based on false, tainted claims.
Australia’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), will invest up to 5 percent of its foreign currency assets in Chinese government bonds, announced its Deputy Governor Philip Lowe on Wednesday, marking a new milestone in the economic relationship between the two APEC countries.
German officials on Tuesday took turns to criticise European Commission President Jose Barroso for his recent remarks advocating an end for austerity, pledging to continue their “growth-friendly consolidation” policies despite growing weariness to the contrary.
On Monday, Barosso had told a Brussels panel discussion that it was time to rethink the bloc’s emphasis on belt-tightening, warning that “we are reaching the limits of the current policies.”
The vulnerability of U.S. financial markets to computerised trading programs was exposed early Tuesday afternoon after a fake tweet detailing an attack on the White House erased nearly $200 billion in stock market value in a matter of two minutes, according to the Wall Street Journal.
