Cairo - Crowds of private investors in Egypt's stock market, rallying angrily outside the bourse in downtown Cairo, demanding a halt in trading or at least the resignation of the exchange's head, have become a common sight in recent weeks.

Egypt's capital market, which for five years has been one of the best performing in the world, is now in the doldrums. The benchmark CASE 30 index has fallen by more than half since last May.

As a result, Egypt's many small retail investors, who had bet their family's savings on the seemingly inexorable rise of the CASE, are increasingly caught by the financial, social and psychological fallout of the global credit crunch.

Ordinary Egyptian families are now feeling the pain, some in desperate ways.

Tokyo - Japanese parliament on Friday approved a government nominee to fill a vacancy at the central bank's deputy governorship.

Hirohide Yamaguchi, 57, who currently serves as the Bank of Japan's executive director, was appointed as the bank's deputy governor after the opposition-controlled upper house supported the government's choice.

Brasilia - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday called for "urgent" reform in international financial institutions as the ongoing credit crisis has put developing countries at risk.

"The progress that our countries have made is at risk. The global financial crisis can affect developing countries in an unfair and particularly harsh way," he said.

Mexico City - Mexico's central bank sold 1.096 billion dollars of its foreign exchange reserves Thursday to boost the peso.

The Bank of Mexico sold 1 billion dollars as markets opened and the remainder later in the day.

The value of the dollar went as high as 14.30 pesos before the bank's intervention, although it closed at 13.79 pesos.

Mexico's central bank has sold more than 13 billion dollars since October 8, but the price of the dollar continues to rise. It was worth about 11.2 pesos on October 1.

Stockholm - Main Swedish banking groups Nordea, Swedbank and SEB on Thursday reported third-quarter results suggesting they had weathered the first phases of the financial turmoil.

Shares for all three groups were mid-morning in positive territory on the Stockholm bourse where the OMXS index was flat. The fourth major group Handelsbanken, which reported Wednesday, was also up.

Banking group Swedbank said its third-quarter operating profit was 3.1 billion kronor (395 million dollars), down 15 per cent year-on-year, while total income in the quarter was 8.2 billion kronor or 13 per cent lower than in second-quarter 2008.