BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European leaders will discuss how to combat aggressive tax avoidance by major companies such as Amazon, Google and Apple at a summit on Wednesday, and cut the estimated 1 trillion euros a year the EU ...

The UK's planned austerity measures will be a drag on economic growth, the International Monetary Fund has warned. ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - Profit growth at China's state-owned companies cooled in the first four months of the year, government data showed on Wednesday, underscoring a faltering recovery in the world's second-biggest economy ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's financial regulator said it had finalised capital requirements for Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group and was comfortable with their plans. ...

Venezuela's National Assembly backs plans to import 39 million rolls of toilet paper, in an effort to relieve a chronic shortage. ...

Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer spoke with FOX Business Network's Liz Claman about the news that JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon won shareholder approval to keep his chairman title....   read more ...

Renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has dedicated a heavy-metal video he has made satirising the power of state authorities to dissidents everywhere ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Shares in Britain's No.4 supermarket Wm Morrison fell 2.4 percent on Wedensday after UBS confirmed it had placed around 100 million shares in the firm at 280 pence for an institutional seller. ...

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - How many Mercedes staff does it take to sell a car? The answer, in the luxury carmaker's German showrooms, is more than it takes to shift an Audi - just part of the cost gap Daimler wants to close w ...

DUBLIN (Reuters) - The international community needs to work together to stop large multinationals aggressively playing one country's tax code off against another, Ireland's Minister for Enterprise said on Wednesday. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - British buy-to-let mortgage provider Paragon plans to set up a bank next year, taking advantage of new rules designed to encourage competition to Britain's established lenders. ...

Sony says it will consider a proposal from one of its biggest shareholders that it should spin off up to 20% of its entertainment business. ...

Energy giant SSE pocketed a 28 per cent profits boost as UK households turned up their heating to keep out the bitter winter weather.     ...

Retail sales volumes for the first quarter were significantly worse than expected but data show that state borrowing fell and tax revenues rose ...

NICOSIA (Reuters) - Cyprus faces substantial risks to its outlook, with concerns a forecast recession could be deeper than anticipated, the Governor of its Central Bank said in a prepared speech on Wednesday. ...

The government borrowed slightly less than first thought in the 2012-13 financial year, the latest official figures suggest. ...

Lloyds Banking Group says it will be able to meet new capital requirements without issuing new shares or securities. ...

Kazuo Hirai, chief executive, says no timetable has been fixed for a response to the suggestion that the Japanese group sell off part of its film and music arm ...

LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England's top policymakers remained split 6-3 against restarting its bond purchase programme for a fourth month in a row in May, amid signs that the economy is improving. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Cold weather continued to hurt British retail sales in April, driving the biggest monthly drop in a year, official data showed on Wednesday. ...

UK's largest retail bank does not disclose size of funding gap it has been asked to fill by the new Prudential Regulation Authority ...

Mutual building society sets aside almost £500m to cover souring commercial property loans and warns of weak demand and falling prices in the sector ...

UK retail sales in April were 1.3% lower than in March as bad weather continued to dent spending, official figures show. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Royal Bank of Scotland will issue a statement on its capital position later on Wednesday morning, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters. ...

German software company SAP says it hopes to recruit hundreds of people with autism, saying they have a unique talent for information technology. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - The FTSE 100 endured early weakness on Wednesday, having hit 13-year highs in the previous session, as investors trade cautiously awaiting further clues from the U.S. Federal Reserve over its the outlo ...

Japan posts its tenth straight monthly trade deficit as a weaker yen increases the cost of imports more than it helps boost exports. ...

Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange, which trades commodities, is being probed by the police and market regulators over alleged financial irregularities. ...

Lawyers for former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta sought to reverse his insider-trading conviction on Tuesday, arguing that wiretap evidence used by the prosecution should not have been introduced at trial.... &n ...

Societe Generale's Russian consumer-banking unit, OAO Rosbank (ROSB), is cutting hundreds of back office jobs as it continues cost-reduction efforts, two people with knowledge of the matter said....   read more ...

Rioting in Stockholm spreads to as many as a dozen suburbs as a third night of unrest reopens debate about integration ...

LONDON (Reuters) - British soft drinks maker Britvic will close two factories and a warehouse in the UK and roll out the Fruit Shoot brand in India as part of a new strategy announced with its interim results. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Rolls-Royce has won a contract to supply engines to power 23 Airbus aircraft ordered by U.S. leasing company CIT Aerospace, it said on Wednesday. ...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Foreign banks that once treated Russia as virgin land where easy money could be made are now finding it a cut-throat market tougher than some bargained for. ...

(Reuters) - Parcel delivery company UK Mail Group Plc reported an 18 percent rise in full-year pretax profit as more thrift-conscious Britons look for online shopping deals. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group said on Wednesday that it would be able to meet new capital requirements without having to issue new equity or contingent capital, after Britain's financial regulator updated the b ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Cable & Wireless Communications met expectations with a 1 percent rise in full-year core earnings, and said it would cut $100 million (65 million pounds) of costs from a business now focused on the Car ...

PARIS (Reuters) - British utility SSE said on Wednesday full-year after-tax profit rose 5.8 percent to 1.19 billion euros (1 billion pounds) and increased its full-year dividend by 5.1 percent to 84.2 pence. ...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Sony Corp lowered its sales target for digital cameras to 1.3 trillion yen (8.3 billion pounds) for the fiscal year to end-March 2015, from a previous estimate of 1.5 trillion yen. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Nationwide, Britain's biggest customer-owned financial services group, said its financial position remained robust after posting a 56 percent leap in annual underlying profit driven by demands for an a ...

The UK's largest building society, Nationwide, says its share of the mortgage market has reached a record high. ...

UBS was ordered to face a whistle-blower lawsuit by a former commercial mortgage-backed securities strategist who said he was fired for telling supervisors he was being pressured to publish misleading reports....   ...

Deutsche Bank is asking investors to replace three non-bankers supervising its executives with finance and legal experts after litigation-related costs eroded profit last year....   read more ...

Speculation about a government sell-off of Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group was escalating on Tuesday night amid reports that the International Monetary Fund is urging the Treasury to accelerate its dispos ...

Here is a note of 11 things that happened on this day in history....   read more ...

Energy supplier SSE reports a rise in annual profits despite disruption from bad weather and a fine from regulators. ...

David Cameron is to urge EU leaders to back action against the tax evasion and "aggressive" tax avoidance he says is costing all nations. ...

Japan's central bank decides against fresh monetary easing, judging the measures already taken to stimulate growth enough to revive an economy showing signs of 'picking up' ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors are considering charging Steven A. Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors as a criminal enterprise engaged in a long pattern of insider trading in stocks, according to a person familiar with t ...

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan on Wednesday decided to keep monetary policy on hold, but one board member tried unsuccessfully to loosen the central bank's commitment to achieving its 2 percent inflation target with ...

Japan stocks lead rally, with investors waiting for Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony before Congress later in the day ...

While some notable agreements have boosted ties, in other ways the story of the corporate links spanning the two Asian powerhouses is less happy ...

(Reuters) - Merck & Co Inc said it has entered into a $5 billion (3 billion pounds) share repurchase agreement with Goldman Sachs Group Inc, as the drug giant looks to prop up shareholder value in face of stiff competiti ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Apple's ability to shelter billions of dollars of income from tax has depended on an unusual loophole in the Irish tax code that helps the country compete with other countries for investment and jobs. ...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian stocks rose on Wednesday following a positive lead from Wall Street with Japan's Nikkei reaching a 5-1/2 year high, while the yen took a defensive stance ahead of the outcome of the Bank of Japan ...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's exports rose less than expected in April from a year earlier due to weak demand from Europe and China, highlighting the challenges confronting the world's third-biggest economy as policymakers t ...

TAMPA, Florida (Reuters) - Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co took an unusual step to fight off investors seeking more oversight of his activities - he hinted he might quit. ...

Microsoft unveils the third generation of its video games console in an event at its headquarters at Redmond, Washington. ...

Falling clothes sales at Marks & Spencer have dragged down the retail giant's annual profits to an eight-year low, as it said the executive behind the

Shareholders and activists clamouring for greater executive oversight at the helm of America's biggest bank suffered a blow yesterday after a proposal to split the chairman and chief executive roles at JP Morgan was defe ...