Thursday Papers: Dovish Fed minutes stem rush to risky assets - other news

Financial Times

* The FTSE All-World equity index was up 0.2 per cent; the FTSE 100 closed well off its lows but down 0.3 per cent; the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo and the Kospi in Seoul rose 2.7 per cent and 1.3 per cent, respectively, helping to push the FTSE Asia-Pacific index up 1.4 per cent.

* German prosecutors on Wednesday staged raids on more than a dozen Credit Suisse offices in connection with an inquiry into whether employees of the Swiss bank had helped clients to evade taxes.

* Eurozone industrial output rose 0.9 per cent in May, according to the European Union’s statistical arm.

* Spanish banks and cajas increased their borrowing from the European Central Bank by nearly half to €126.3bn in June from €85.62bn in May, figures released by the Bank of Spain showed.

* Stefan Ortseifen, the former head of IKB bank, has been given a suspended jail sentence after being convicted of market manipulation in the run-up to the bank’s near-collapse during the financial crisis.

* The International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday Ireland will emerge finally from a deep economic slump later this year but the costs of mending the Irish banks will weigh on growth prospects for several years to come.

* Ministers from Germany, France and the UK call for the EU to slash emissions by 30 per cent by 2020, instead of the current 20 per cent target.

* US lawmakers pushed ahead with a plan that would bar BP from obtaining new offshore oil leases because of its poor safety record.

* The Federal Reserve has cut its 2010 growth forecast to between 3.0 per cent and 3.5 per cent in 2010, down from the 3.2 to 3.7 per cent that it forecast in April.

* US regulators must let a large institution collapse without bailing out its creditors to convince markets that no bank is too big to fail, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Jeffrey Lacke, said.

* A sweeping overhaul of the mechanics of shareholder voting is being considered by the Securities and Exchange Commission.