London  - Another 1,150 jobs will be lost in the British banking sector, after investment bank Credit Suisse and British giant HSBC announced cuts on Monday.

The Reserve Bank of India, on Friday announced sops for the exporters and housing finance companies by extending the time period for credit facilities. The apex bank has increased the period for post-shipment export credit to 180 days from existing 90 days.

The move would help exporters who are facing liquidity problem due to the ongoing financial crisis. The bank is already providing refinance help to NBFCs, HFCs and MFs to control credit crunch and refinance facility is further increased to June 30, 2009, from March 31, 2009.

Mr. Ashok Kapur, Non-Executive Chairman of YES Bank, has been killed by terrorists in Hotel Oberoi in south Mumbai.

Mr. Ashok fell to the bullets of terrorists who had laid siege to Hotel for more than 40 hours beginning Wednesday evening.

His body was found on the 19th floor of the hotel, a YES Bank spokesperson said this evening.

Mr. Kapur along with his wife and friends had gone to the Oberoi for dinner on Wednesday at one of the restaurants on the ground floor.

His wife and friends, however, had a miraculous escape.
 

London/Paris  - The European Commission is blocking the French government's plan to bail out its six largest banks by insisting that state funds can not be used for commercial lending, Britain's Financial Times reported Friday on its website.

According to the report, EU Competition Commissioner Nellie Kroes has rejected pleas by French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde to approve the French
10.5-billion-euro (13.3-billion-dollar) plan.

The Financial Times quoted an unnamed EU official as saying, "We have to apply the same criteria to everyone ... support should be sufficient to offset the negative impact of the current financial crisis and no more."

London  - The British government is to own a majority share of almost 58 per cent in the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) after shareholders failed to take up a rights issue to inject new capital into the ailing bank.

RBS announced Friday that only 0.24 per cent of the new shares offered - or 56 million shares - were bought under the scheme offered by the Edinburgh-based bank.

This means that the government - and the taxpayer - will pay about 15 billion pounds (22.5 billion dollars) for a majority stake of 57.9 per cent in the bank.

Public sector lender, Punjab National Bank has decided to lower the benchmark prime lending rates by 100 basis points on Wednesday. It is the second interest rate reduction by the bank in four weeks. Earlier, it had announced to cut the BPLR by 50 basis points on October 31. Now, industry and general public can get credit at low rates in the present credit struck environment.

The revised interest rate would be effective from Monday. The decision may also encourage other banks to revise interest rates.