Retail sales fell less than expected in June as a strong showing from grocers offset weakness in clothing and household goods stores, a survey showed on Wednesday.

As many as 600,000 people could lose their jobs in Britain next year, making 2009 the worst year for unemployment since 1991, personnel experts warned on Monday.

Global financial turmoil has prompted a dramatic acceleration in the speed at which mergers are consummated, possibly storing up problems for hasty acquirers, a survey released on Monday said.

Investors who would normally seek a safe haven in gold in what is one of the worst financial crises in history are shunning the precious metal because of the market's extreme volatility.

Investors who have plowed $3.48 trillion (2 trillion pounds) into money market mutual funds will likely see their already low yields fall further, but few may benefit from lower management fees, as they did the last time the Federal Reserve drove its benchmark lending rate down to 1 percent.

Holdings of equities by leading investors hit a new low in October as financial markets quaked before the deteriorating global economy and credit crisis, with only U.S. fund managers showing signs of improving sentiment.

The International Monetary Fund has record levels of liquidity to bail out countries but if the financial crisis continues much longer it may need more resources, a senior IMF official said on Tuesday.

Will global cooperation over the financial crisis give way to national fights over state subsidies to industries hit by the economic fall-out?

A stream of profit warnings from European corporates is set to become a torrent in coming weeks, but the equity markets have factored in most of what will be thrown at them.

The IMF has finally stepped into the limelight with three high-profile rescues in three days, passing the first test of whether it can resume a leadership role as emerging economies pay the price for a credit crisis spawned by the world's richest nations.

Global intervention should steady the banking system but it will also put big constraints on banks, the Bank of England said on Tuesday, six months after it said it expected confidence to return to financial markets.

Despite continuing steep stock market losses, policy-makers will likely give the $4 trillion-plus (2.5 trillion pounds) already thrown at the global crisis a chance to work before they take any more emergency steps.

Companies as diverse as fertilizer maker Potash Corp, pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co Inc and steelmaker Nucor Corp all have one thing in common: they view the financial market turmoil as opening up acquisition opportunities.

The economy is expected to have contracted in the three months to September, with policymakers and economists now increasingly certain that the country's first recession since the early 1990s is underway.

Shares in airlines around the world have been battered in 2008 due to the soaring cost of fuel, and have yet to recover despite a halving of the oil price since its $147 a barrel spike in June.

The shotgun marriage of Lloyds TSB and HBOS is having trouble even before the nuptials, with many members of the groom's family unhappy about the union.

Shoppers barely trimmed their spending in September, even as the world's financial system teetered on the brink of collapse, threatening to drag the economy down with it.

When the credit conflagration morphed into a full-fledged panic in financial markets this month, the major stock market that plunged the most was Japan's - one of the countries least affected by the crisis.

Spending on non-food items on the high street is set to fall in the run up to Christmas for the first time in more than a decade, research forecast on Thursday.