India's Dena Bank has informed that it has raised Rs 300 by selling lower tier II bonds to meet its future capital adequacy ratio requirements.

Brussels - The European Commission on Wednesday gave the green light to the purchase by Germany's Deutsche Bank of parts of Dutch ABN Amro from troubled Benelux giant Fortis, judging that it would not harm competition in Europe.

The decision comes a year after the commission ruled that Fortis could buy up parts of ABN Amro as long as it sold off certain key ventures, and three months after Deutsche bid some 709 million euros (1 billion dollars) for the parts.

But it comes too late to save Fortis, which the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg governments part-privatized at the weekend in a bid to save it from a collapse triggered by the global financial crisis.

Brussels  - The European Union on Wednesday launched a probe into the five-billion-euro German state aid package granted to troubled bank WestLB, but said that the probe did not necessarily indicate any suspicion of wrongdoing, officials said in a statement.

The EU's executive, the European Commission, has opened "an in- depth investigation into state support measures in favour of the German bank WestLB. This is a first step towards finding a viable long-term solution, in close contact with the German authorities," a statement released in Brussels said.

Brussels  - The European Union on Wednesday approved in record time Britain's nationalization of troubled financier Bradford & Bingley, the country's eighth-biggest mortgage lender, saying that it was in line with EU rules.

On Monday the British government decided to take the lender into public ownership and sell off its savings and deposits business to Spanish banking giant Santander in a deal which the buyer valued at 612 million pounds (1.1 billion dollars).

The move was made in consultation with experts from the EU's executive, the European Commission, which oversees the bloc's rules on competition and state aid.

Brussels  - The European Union's executive body is to demand that banks keep more of their riskiest securities on their own books and submit to international supervision on Wednesday as the global financial storm showed no signs of abating.

In a long-awaited move, EU Internal Markets Commissioner Charlie McCreevy is set to demand that banks which sell high-risk debts, such as mortgages, as assets should keep at least 5 per cent of those assets on their own books, officials said.

He is also expected to call on banks to set aside a proportion of their capital as a safety net against the collapse of other banks with which they have financial ties.

London - Bank shares on the London stock market showed a slight recovery Wednesday as markets anticipated the eventual passage of the US rescue plan.