China will continue to invest in euro zone government debt, the country’s central bank governor said today, while calling on Europeans to produce more attractive investment products for China. Zhou Xiaochuan admitted that China and other emerging nations like Brazil, Russia or India were waiting for the right time to help the bloc, after a European Union state visit was once again met with encouraging... 

Facebook’s privately traded shares have risen 10 per cent since the dominant social network filed for an initial public offering, pushing its market value past $US100 billion, according to SharesPost. SharesPost managed the auction of 150,000 shares of Facebook’s Class B common stock at a clearing price of $US44, compared with $US40 February 2, according to a statement from the private-stock... 

Facebook filed papers overnight to raise at least $US5 billion in one of the most hotly anticipated IPOs of the decade. Below is the letter from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to prospective investors: Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected. We think it’s important that everyone... 

Stephen Hester, the chief executive of Britain’s state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland, will not take his hotly-disputed bonus of shares worth close to £1 million, the bank says. It was announced last week that Mr Hester would receive a £963,000 ($1.5 million) bonus this year, on top of his £1.2 million salary. The announcement – amid government calls for pay restraint during the continuing... 

Figure represents 64.2% of GDP; public borrowing for current year drops; government on target for £127 billion budget deficit Britain’s national debt has risen above £1 trillion for the first time on record, underlining the huge task facing the government in bringing the public finances under control. Official figures released on Tuesday showed the total public sector net debt (excluding the... 

THE Mafia is now Italy’s biggest business enterprise, with an annual turnover of €140 billion ($A174 billion), according to an authoritative report. The country’s four Mafia groups have broken out of their traditional strongholds and spread across the whole country, taking advantage of the economic crisis to snap up ailing businesses and ramp up their loan-shark operations. They have... 

STANDARD & Poor has swept the debt-ridden European continent with punishing credit downgrades, stripping France of its coveted AAA status and dropping Italy even lower. Germany has retained its top-notch rating, but Portugal’s debt has been consigned to junk. In all, S&P, which took away the United States’ AAA rating last summer, lowered the ratings of nine countries on Friday,... 

Robust economic growth and higher tax revenues slashed the German budget deficit to nearly three times less than originally forecast. The federal government’s deficit tumbled to 17.3 billion euros ($21.40 billion), compared with the 48.4 billion euros it had initially expected, according to official figures released overnight. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had said during the course of the... 

Warren Buffett is willing to put his money where his mouth is, if only congressional Republicans would join him. The American billionaire investor, in the new issue of Time magazine, says he would donate $US1 to paying down the national debt for every dollar donated by a Republican in Congress. The only exception is Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell – for whom Mr Buffett said he would... 

The devastating earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand made 2011 the costliest year yet for the insurance industry in terms of natural disaster losses, a leading reinsurance company said Wednesday. Munich Re AG said in an annual report that insured losses last year totaled $105 billion—exceeding the previous record of $101 billion set in 2005, when losses were swollen by claims from Hurricane Katrina...