The US Securities and Exchange Commission has arrested Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon hedge fund, for his alleged part in a $20 million insider trading scheme. Former and present executives from IBM, McKinsey and Intel have also been charged.
The chief of Lazard investment bank, Bruce Wasserstein, died on Wednesday at the age 61. He had played a key role in some of Wall Street's biggest deals over the past 30 years.
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde (photo) is leading a governmental drive to attract investment from Muslim countries, in a bid to turn Paris into the European capital of Islamic finance and help France battle the credit crisis.
Former Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, who was forced to resign after appearing drunk at a G7 news conference earlier this year, was found dead in his Tokyo home. The cause of his death has not yet been determined.
Japan's record deflation continued apace in the month of August as the core index of consumer prices slipped 2.4% in the sixth consecutive monthly drop.
As the G20 summit opens in the US city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, world leaders face significant hurdles on their way to a consensus on how to fix the global economy and ensure it can weather the financial storms of the future.
Germany's central bank will lend 15 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund, beefing-up the Washington-based institution's capacity to assist poor countries in the current global economic crisis.
The International Monetary Fund executive board approved on Friday the sale of 403 tonnes of gold worth 13 billion dollars. The money will boost the institution's capacity to lend to poor countries.
Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday that the social networking site became "cash-flow positive" for the first time in the last financial quarter and is now earning enough to cover its operating costs.
Hirohisa Fujii, a 77-year-old former bureaucrat who has been a vocal opponent of wasteful public spending in the past, announced on Wednesday that he had accepted the post of Japanese finance minister under incoming premier Yukio Hatoyama.
