Economy

• Friday, October 26th 2012 - 00:57 UTC

  Brazil renews tax cuts for local carmakers until 2013 to help industry and jobs

  

  Brazil will renew tax cuts for local carmakers through the end of the year, President Dilma Rousseff announced this week, extending a key economic stimulus measure to help recovery in Latin America's largest economy.

• Friday, October 26th 2012 - 00:14 UTC

  Brazil central bank says ‘recovery in underway’ and inflation in ‘under control’

  

  Brazil Central Bank President Alexandre Tombini Tuesday said “there are consistent signs that the recovery of economic growth is underway” and insisted despite some market skepticism, that inflation is “under control.”

• Thursday, October 25th 2012 - 19:21 UTC

  Big business call on US Congress to cut the budget deficit with tax reform

  

  Chief executives of more than 80 big US corporations, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Boeing, joined forces today to pressure Congress to reduce the federal deficit with tax reform and spending cuts.

• Thursday, October 25th 2012 - 19:12 UTC

  Hong Kong intervenes to weaken its currency, threatened by capital inflow surge

  

  Hong Kong's central bank has intervened in financial markets again, weakening the value of its currency after it jumped in value. This follows similar moves on Sunday and pushes the total cost of intervention in the past week to 14.3bn Hong Kong dollars (1.85bn dollars).

• Thursday, October 25th 2012 - 19:06 UTC

  Santander quarterly profits plummet 90%; property losses provision of 3.5bn euros

  

  Spanish bank Santander has said its quarterly profits fell by more than 90% after taking provisions for bad property loans in its local market. Net income fell to 100m Euros in the third quarter from 1.8bn Euros in the same period last year, it said.

• Thursday, October 25th 2012 - 18:26 UTC

  Olympics and Diamond Jubilee help UK economy return to growth in third quarter

  

  Spurred by the Olympics the UK economy returned to growth at its fastest pace in five years, official figures showed on Thursday. GDP 1% in the third quarter of the year, the Office for National Statistics said. This ended three consecutive quarters of declining output.

• Thursday, October 25th 2012 - 18:18 UTC

  Falklands Oil & Gas complete farm-out deal with US Noble Energy; drilling delay

  

  Falkland Oil and Gas Ltd., (FOGL), announced completion of the farm-out agreement with Noble Energy Falklands Limited, an affiliate of Houston based Noble Energy, Inc. and the signing of agreements with Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) for the acquisition and processing of two new 3D seismic surveys.

• Thursday, October 25th 2012 - 06:39 UTC

  US sues Bank of America for mortgage fraud; ex Goldman & Sachs, two years in jail

  

  Bank of America is being sued for 1bn dollars for alleged mortgage fraud. The civil lawsuit has been brought by the US Attorney Preet Bharara, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, New York.

• Thursday, October 25th 2012 - 06:31 UTC

  Argentina reaches surplus target but exports in September plummeted 27%

  

  Argentine exports in September experienced their largest drop since the 2009 financial crisis totalling 6.818bn dollars or 12% less than the same month a year ago, according to the latest report on the country’s foreign trade released by INDEC.

• Thursday, October 25th 2012 - 00:10 UTC

  Fed pledges all efforts and policy tools to combat “elevated” unemployment

  

  In its last meeting before the November 6 presidential election, the Federal Reserve confirmed its current fresh-money support program for the recovery of the US economy arguing that growth continues slowly and unemployment rate “remains elevated”.