Western Europe
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Switzerland is set to bow to years of pressure from the EU by overhauling the system of tax privileges that has helped entice thousands of multinational firms to the country.
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Not since the grim period after World War II has Germany had significant blackouts, but it is now bracing for that possibility after shutting down half its nuclear reactors practically overnight. The New York Times reports.
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Some of the UK asset management industry's biggest names are running "dog" equity funds – serial underperformers that are not returning value to their clients, according to a new report from broker Bestinvest.
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Global recession in 2012 is “65 to 75 percent certain" and could deteriorate into a lengthy depression, Roger Nightingale, economist and strategist at RDN Associates, told CNBC on Monday.
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The Celtic Tiger boom years, and the subsequent bust, have made Ireland seem like a basket case, with the recent history of its housing market consigned to economics textbooks forever as an example of a hugely overinflated bubble.
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A few years ago, I pointed out in a column that the cost of insuring the US government against a default in the credit derivatives market, had risen above that of McDonalds, the US fast food company, for the first time, the FT's Gillian Tett writes.
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Volatility is likely to be a major challenge for the asset management industry and institutional investors, as a lack of transparency and major concerns over the global economy persist, according to Nicholas Lyster, European CEO of asset management firm Principal Global Investors.
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The dollar is set to slide, and Poland's finance minister says the euro's on the edge — it's time for your FX Fix.
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With speculation growing that the Fed could pull the trigger on QE3 next month and the ECB buying up bonds in the euro zone, analysts at ING in Amsterdam have been asking if it is possible for a central bank to go bust.
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CNBC's Guy Johnson reports from Greece on the proposed merger between the country's second and third largest banks, Alpha Bank and Eurobank.
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German “bad bank” agencies holding billions of euros of Greek debt have still to decide whether to join a bond swap designed to cut Athens’ refinancing burden as part of an EU bail-out, the FT writes.
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CNBC's Carolin Schober discusses recreational gold panning in the Swiss Alps.
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In Jackson Hole Wyoming on Saturday Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank was due to give a speech to a meeting of policy makers hosted by the Federal Reserve. As he prepared to speak the euro zone faced huge problems.
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Following weeks of heavy losses for banking stocks across Europe, the Sunday Times in the UK reported Sunday that European officials are working on a "radical plan" to prevent a fresh pan-European credit crunch.
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On July 21, EU leaders, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund agreed on a second rescue package for Greece, one they hoped would put the country in a position to come to grips with its debts. That deal is now looking like it could fall apart.
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Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has spoken, and now it's European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet's turn. Here's how to trade the central banker-speak.
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"It reminds [Bernanke's speech] me of the movie airplane in the scene where one of the gates agents is saying 'don't panic don't panic' where all the passengers are running towards the exits. I think his primary job as Fed chief is just to be calm and to try and reassure markets. The story is kinda wearing thin, the vaudeville act, no-one's really buying it," Andrew Schiff, investment consultant at Euro Pacific Capital told CNBC. "The markets were expecting some kind of QE3 announcement today, they didn't get it but what they did get....was the extended meeting of the Fed in September and maybe they will get some grand QE3 strategy announcement in September."
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Forbes Magazine might have just put German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the throne for the "Most Powerful Woman" in the world, but at home her less exulted throne of government is shaking.
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Germany is playing a cat and mouse game with less successful European economies as negotiations over the euro zone crisis continue at the country level, Giles Keating, head of research at Credit Suisse, told CNBC Friday.
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"I am looking for dislocation, opportunities to add value over a long period of time. You take a company like GlaxoSmithKline, profitability is up two-fold in the last 13 years, yet the share price is down 30 percent. So as a long-term investor, if I can buy Glaxo at 30 percent less, and 12 years on it has doubled its profitability, that's a good trade," Haig Bathgate, CIO at Turcan Connell, told CNBC.
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In any murder mystery film, it pays to watch the boring gray man (or woman) in the corner; quiet, unobtrusive characters can be deadly. So, too, in finance. Four years ago, the giant US money market funds seemed some of the dullest actors in the global financial scene. But in 2007, they quietly helped to spark the crisis in the mortgage-backed securities world.