Last month federal government announced, in its budget, the formation of the Canadian Secured Credit Facility under which Ottawa will purchase up to $12 billion in securities from financial institutions including banks.

The securities would be supported by loans and leases on vehicles and equipment. This would enable the automakers to offer financing to more consumers and dealers.

This news comes as the much needed relief to the automobile industry scorched by recession. But they seem to be getting much too impatient to wait till June.

Tata group owned Tata Motors and Bangalore based Corporation Bank has signed a deal aimed to provide easy finance facilities to customers for purchase of passenger cars. The deal may help the company, facing low demand in auto sector under the impact of global slowdown and recession like conditions across the world.

Stockholm - Swedish banking group Swedbank fourth-quarter 2008 operating profit declined 23 per cent, the group said Thursday, announcing a write-down of its subsidiary in Ukraine.

Fourth-quarter operating profit was 2.4 billion kronor (294 million dollars), while total income in the quarter increased 26 per cent to 10.34 billion kronor.

The write-down in Ukraine totalled 1.4 billion kronor. In a comment Swedbank chief executive Jan Liden, who is to leave the bank in April, said that "although the short-term outlook in Ukraine is challenging, we are convinced of a positive long-term future."

The Union government, in its recent decision, has announced capital infusion in three public sector banks namely UCO Bank, Central Bank of India and  

Vijaya Bank. The Kolkata based UCO bank would get capital worth Rs 1,200 crore, through UCO's non-convertible preference shares, from center government in two installments, Rs 450 crore immediately and the balance Rs 750 crore in 2009-10.

Budapest - The Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority (HSFA) has fined the London-based bank HSBC for violating local laws in a bond trading deal last October.

The regulatory body announced on its website that it had imposed a fine of 80 million forints (350,000 dollars) on the bank for breaking local laws on manipulating the market.

The financial watchdog found that HSBC had offered for sale a large volume of Hungarian government bonds on October 10 last year, a move which led to rise in the yield of the bonds.

Brussels  - Shareholders in Dutch-Belgian bank Fortis on Wednesday rejected its emergency nationalization, throwing into chaos state plans to split up the crisis-hit lender.

In two votes, 57 per cent of shareholders rejected the sale of the Dutch parts of the bank to the Dutch state, while just over half of shareholders rejected the sale of the bank's Belgian arm to the Belgian state, and thence to French banking giant BNP Paribas, local media reported.