Munich - German business confidence slipped more sharply than expected this month, with the Ifo institute of Munich saying Wednesday its index falling to 92.9 points, from 94.8 in August.
It was the fourth straight month in which the index fell.
Economists who watch the index closely had on average predicted the September reading would only fall to 94.1.
Ifo's separate index of business expectations declined marginally from 87.0 in August to 86.5 in September, whereas the assessment of the current position slumped from
103.2 to 99.8.
The index sums up a monthly survey of 7,000 executives, economists and other business leaders.
Singapore - Banks in Singapore that sold structured products linked to the collapsed US investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc have been asked to update investors on how much money they would get back, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said Wednesday.
Tokyo - Japan's central bank on Wednesday pumped 1.5 trillion yen (14.22 billion dollars) into money markets, the sixth-straight business day that it had injected money into the economy in the wake of the US banking crisis.
Paris - Other industrial nations besides the United States should begin drawing up plans to shore up their financial sectors, the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said in an article published Tuesday in the French daily Le Monde.
Paris - As investors began having second thoughts, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on Tuesday praised the United States' plan to rescue its badly ailing financial industry.
Hanoi - Vietnam's inflation rate in September dropped to 0.18 per cent from August's 1.56 per cent because of falling food and fuel prices, Vietnamese government officials said Tuesday in a preliminary reading.
