Washington - US President George W Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy Saturday said an emergency global summit on the finance crisis will be held in the United States, possibly before the end of November. 

The announcement was made at the presidential retreat, Camp David, outside Washington, where European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso also joined the meeting. 

Washington - US President George W Bush, who was to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy later Saturday, was expected to host a global summit on the finance crisis in the US, the New York Times reported online. 

The Times quoted an unnamed senior White House official as saying Bush was to announce his invitation at Camp David, the presidential retreat where the two men and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso were to meet. 

Paris - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has offered to have the United Nations host an international summit on reforming the global finance system, the online version of the French daily Le Figaro reported Saturday.

In a letter to the French president and current head of the European Union, Ban said that he "firmly" supported Sarkozy's call for an international conference to reform the global finance system and proposed holding it at UN headquarters in New York, no later than early December.

Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have agreed that the United Nations will host an international summit on reforming the global financial system in December, the French daily Le Figaro reported Saturday on its website.

It remains unclear who is to participate at the meeting, which Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have said should be "a new Bretton Woods."

Paris - French shares shrugged off Wall Street's indecisiveness on Friday to end a volatile week on a positive note.

The Paris Bourse's CAC 40 blue-chip index finished Friday's session up 4.68 per cent, at 3,329.92, with advancing issues besting losers by 3 to 1.

Steel giant ArcelorMittal led the advance, gaining 10.57 per cent, to end the week at 22.22 euros. Energy supplier GDF Suez was also sought by investors, climbing by 
10.51 per cent, to 29.39 euros.

Paris (dpa) - French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has asked the
government's bank oversight authority to look into the country's
second-largest banking group, Caisse d'Epargne, after it announced a
loss of 600 million euros (804 million dollars) in a derivatives trade,
French radio reported Friday.

The loss, which the bank described as a "market incident," occurred
during the week of October 6, when the Paris Bourse's CAC 40 index lost
22 per cent of its value.

The Caisse d'Epargne, which controls some 358 billion euros in
savings deposits, said Friday in a statement that the loss was caused
by "the extreme volatility of the markets and the stock market crash of
the week of October 6."