London - The Bank of England Wednesday cut interest rates by 0.5 percentage points to 4.5 per cent, it was announced Wednesday.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament that the decision to reduce the key interest rate had been taken as part of a worldwide action to combat economic turmoil.

The announcement came a day ahead of the end of the meeting of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) Thursday.

Interest rates have remained unchanged at 5 per cent for the past five months, as the Bank of England gave priority to the fight against inflation.

Singapore  - Singapore's central bank has signed an agreement with Dubai's financial regulator to cooperate in supervising banking, insurance and capital markets, said the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in a statement Wednesday.

"It facilitates the exchange of information for supervisory purposes between the two authorities," the MAS said, of the agreement with the Dubai Financial Services Authority.

"Such cooperation helps to strengthen the supervision of cross-border operations of financial institutions under their purview," the statement added.

The MAS signed a similar agreement with Qatar's financial regulator last week.

London  - The British government pledged Wednesday to compensate some 300,000 savers who have placed their money with an Icelandic internet bank following the country's banking nationalization programme.

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said Wednesday that the government would help savers with deposits in the bank Icesave, whose parent company Landsbanki was nationalized by the Reykjavik government.

"I am very aware of the fact that Iceland has, sadly, chosen to default on its obligations here. We are pursuing Iceland and we will pursue it vigorously to make sure that we get the money due to us back," Darling told the BBC.

The liquidity crunch can increase due to high demand of cash for Dussera and the auction of government securities worth Rs 17,000-crore. The banks have already cut the lending and MFs are interested to access overnight funds from RBI like the other banks. 

Various funds houses also discussed the situation and met with the deputy governors of the Reserve Bank.

A CEO of a leading fund house said that fund houses should be allowed to raise money through repo transactions with banks and financial institutions. 

Investment Information Credit Rating Agency ICRA Limited (ICRA) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Karnataka Bank Ltd. 

Under the arrangement, ICRA will assign ratings to the Bank's loans and its other exposures under the standardized approach of RBI's New Capital Adequacy Framework for Basel-II.

ICRA's ratings for the standardized approach would be carried out under its "Line of Credit rating service and would enable Vijaya Bank to assign the new risk weights applicable to its borrowers under Basel-II

ICICI Bank, India’s second largest lender, in association with Dish TV, India’s first direct to home(DTH) entertainment service provider has launched Interactive Banking Service “ICICI ACTIVE”. 

The latest move will facilitate Dish TV viewers to access information on ICICI Bank products and services, from the convenience of their homes. 

Through latest launched customer friendly service, Dish TV viewers will be able to get information about different types of ICICI Bank accounts and deposits that suits their need.