Morning all. Friday's market reports:
The Times
The Times (Need to know)
FT
The Guardian
The Independent
This is Money
Saturday
The benchmark interbank lending rate fell to just one basis point above 1pc yesterday as the markets continue to react to low policy rates and government action to free up credit markets.
Interbank lending rate narrows as trust returns
Government moves to kickstart the economy by printing money were called into question yesterday after data showed that its quantitative easing programme failed to deliver the boost to Britain's money supply in March that is seen as vital to recovery.
Figures show quantitative easing plan is not delivering
Hopes of a quick recovery in the housing market received a setback today after the Bank of England revealed that mortgage approvals were slightly weaker than forecast.
Mortgage approvals hit house price revival hope
China's vast manufacturing sector gained further momentum last month, according to the latest survey figures.
Chinese manufacturing continues upward momentum
Japan returned to deflation for the first time in two years, as the Japanese economy contracts sharply in the face of the global economic downturn.
Deflation returns to Japan as recession bites
The price of gold dipped on Friday as a recovery in risk appetite, reflected in a firmer tone to global stocks, dented interest in the metal as a haven, although the metal pared its losses as US equities edged lower.
Gold falls as investors rediscover their appetite for risk
Sunday
THE European Central Bank is set to cut its key interest rate to 1% this week, the lowest in its 10-year history. The ECB is also expected to embrace other measures to boost the money supply and head off the threat of deflation.
ECB to slash interest rates to record low
Citigroup may be forced to raise an additional $10bn (6.7bn) as the result of "stress tests" being conducted by the American government.
Citi acts on stress tests
Local authorities are piling more pressure on the struggling building society sector by planning to withdraw billions of pounds of deposits.
Councils shun mutuals after ratings cuts
BARCLAYS will publish first-quarter profits this week that will demonstrate why its share price has soared nearly sixfold since the beginning of the year.
Lehman boosts Barclays
Barclays bank is playing a lead role in the establishment of a tax haven in Ghana, in a move that could see huge mineral wealth in west Africa vanish into it from poverty-stricken countries' coffers, the Observer can reveal.
Barclays and Ghana plan tax haven
Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, yesterday faced shareholder demands to name his successor following five consecutive quarters of declining profit at Berkshire Hathaway.
Buffett told: name your successor
With eerie prescience, the City tracked a pandemic using a 'bird flu' scenario in 2006 leaving it better prepared for the effects of the swine flu outbreak. UK financial regulators have rehearsed how a pandemic like the swine flu, now spreading from Mexico, will affect Britain. In the most detailed disaster planning exercise held anywhere in the world, more than 70 City firms, including HSBC and Norwich Union, secretly tested how the crisis would unfold over five months.
Secret flu plan inoculates Square Mile
Monday
Thirteen Asian countries have agreed to set up a $120bn (80.5bn) crisis fund to boost liquidity and overcome the economic crisis.
Asia establishes $120bn crisis fund
Centre for Economics and Business Research estimates that from 2010 house prices will begin to rise by 3.1% with a further 2.5% increase coming by the end of 2011.
Thinktank says house prices will start to rise again next year
And yet the billionaire investor was forced uncharacteristically on to the defensive at his annual shareholder meeting, asked to justify his investments in a credit rating agency at the heart of the financial crisis, a bank that had to take US government bailout money, and in derivatives that are continuing to erode his companys profits.
The Oracle of Omaha loses his visionary powers and feels the heat
Tuesday
Investors and analysts on edge as they wait to see which of the country's 19 biggest banks have been identified as the weakest institutions.
Wall Street awaits results of US bank 'stress tests'
US bank shares surged on Monday as investors bet that some of the biggest banks will have to raise less capital than feared after this weeks release of the governments stress test results for 19 banks.
US banks surge on test hopes
Regulators have told Wells Fargo to shore up its finances after government "stress tests" showed the bank would have trouble surviving a deeper recession.
Wells Fargo Is Asked to Raise More Capital After Stress Test
Barack Obama on Monday unveiled a sweeping crackdown on offshore tax avoidance by US companies, in a move likely to affect the way Britain taxes profits earned by UK companies operating abroad.
Obama takes aim at US multinationals
As the stockmarket gains 20% in a matter of weeks, some have claimed a bull market has already begun, but can such growth be relied upon?
Economic optimism grows as the FTSE begins to recover
The European Commission has revised economic forecasts sharply downwards and pushed recovery predictions out to the second half of 2010 in the face of the "deepest and most widespread recession in the post-war era".
Brussels doubles EU recession forecasts for 2009
Industry across Asia may be at risk from a sudden revival in Chinese manufacturing as the workshop of the world is lifted out of a nine-month slump with the help of a $600 billion (400 billion) monetary and fiscal government stimulus.
Signs of recovery in China's workshops raise fears for Asian industry and prices
Record inventories of crude oil are building up around the world threatening to swamp storage space and belying optimism in the markets about an imminent economic recovery.
Rising reserves of unused oil put strain on storage