Another New Zealand finance company announced it was in trouble
Tuesday, the 26th victim of the worldwide credit crunch in the last two
years.

The US government is looking at plans for a possible takeover of the country's two largest mortgage financing firms amid the ongoing crisis in the mortgage sector, the New York Times reported Friday.

World financial crisis allowed Russian banks to increase by one third its presence in the top of the world's leading banks in the world, made up by the "The Banker" magazine. Among the 1000 biggest banks according to their capital 35 are Russian.

Despite the crisis, the number of banks, claiming the statute of largest in the world, is growing.

The financial authorities of the northern Italian region Veneto (with centre Venice) launched a series of investigations of buyers of luxury yachts, which in recent years had declared zero income, announced Corriere della Sera.

A series of bad news, including new record levels of oil prices pulled down significantly share prices of Wall Street yesterday. Dow Jones index lost nearly 360 points, closing at its lowest level in almost two years.

The third largest insurance company in Europe - the Italian Assicurazioni Generali SpA, has acquired Romanian insurers Rai and Ardaf and thus increased its market share in the country, the company reported.

Russia wants to reduce state's role in the country's economy and will curtail government's expenditure in order to cope with the growing inflation, said the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in an interview for Reuters.

The biggest U.S. investment bank - Citigroup Inc., is getting ready for a considerable reduction of its staff - around 10%.

Since the beginning of the year the bank, which has around 300 000 employees, has announced the cutting of 13 000 jobs.

In China and India, the two leading economies of Asia, inflationary spiral is ever more strongly is running high. Analysts believe that inflation in both countries has to a larger degree imported nature.

Bulgaria has a good grain harvest and will be able to export 2 million tonnes of production this year. This was announced in Pleven by Georgi Milev, chairman of the Regional Association of grain-producers, referring to data from sectoral organization.