The French government on Friday announced a further €3.5bn of tax rises for 2011 the latest in a series of announcements that puts Paris’s austerity drive on par with Berlin’s much-criticised plan to trim its budget.The latest announcement – intended to reassure the markets while not scaring the French public about impending austerity –- brings to €13.2bn the amount France aims to raise from tax
Vodafone found support on Friday as a fourth successive decline for the FTSE 100 had investors searching for safety.Shares in Vodafone added 0.8 per cent to 144p as Merrill Lynch forecast its US joint venture to provide a dividend as early as September 2011.This would boost the group pay-out by a third, it said.
Peter Orszag, Barack Obama’s budget director, resigned this week partly in frustration over his lack of success in persuading the Obama administration to tackle the fiscal deficit more aggressively, according to sources inside and outside the White House.Mr Orszag, whose publicly stated reasons for leaving were that he was exhausted after years in high pressure jobs and also that he wanted to pla
The passage of financial reform legislation in the US Congress in the early hours of Friday morning will give the US delegation more credibility when they try to sell similar policies to their G20 partners this weekend.But experts in the process said it was unlikely to make much difference to the international debate.
A US Supreme Court ruling on Thursday night jeopardises a hedge fund lawsuit against Porsche claiming more than $2bn in damages following the VW saga, analysts warn.Dismissing an unrelated lawsuit against National Australia Bank, the Supreme Court ruled that investors buying shares of foreign companies in jurisdictions outside the US could not use the American legal system to claim damages for al
The US Marines call their project the “Yellow School for its colour scheme – a zesty lemon that leaps out of Marjah’s drab vista of farmsteads, irrigation canals and scrub.The classrooms are occupied by young men: heavily armed Americans who have turned the compound into a fortress.Gun-emplacements squat on the corrugated iron roofs.A few days ago, shots hit the walls.
Asian equities saw the gains inspired by renminbi revaluation fade away over the week as investors took profits after weak US economic data clouded global growth optimism.
The world wide web will get its own red-light district after the body that oversees the internet’s structure overcame its reluctance over .xxx web addresses for pornographic sites.Icann, the non-profit group that assigns internet names, said on Friday it would move forward with the suffix, putting an end to a six-year battle with ICM Registry, the US-based company that first applied to run it in