Berlin - The effects of the Wall Street financial crisis on Germany have been moderate so far, Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Bundestag parliament in Berlin Wednesday.

In a debate on the 2009 federal budget, she said credit to German business had been significantly expanded.

The government was closely watching the crisis and consulting German banking leaders and other governments.

"An open economy like Germany's won't remain completely unaffected by this," she said.

Karachi - The Pakistan rupee on Wednesday plunged to a new record low of 77.66 against the US dollar amid rising tension with the United States over military operations inside Pakistani territory, traders said.

The rupee finally closed at 77.40 to a dollar in the open market but traders said it would slump to 78 by Friday as worsening relations with the US, the biggest donor, could cloud prospects of Pakistan receiving urgent financial aid from multilateral agencies to boost fledging foreign currency reserves.

The 30-share index, BSE Sensex continued to trade pessimistically as intense selling pressure was seen in banking realty, FMCG and metal stocks, whereas auto stock managed to trade in the positive terrain.

Midcap and Smallcap index fell 1.29% and 0.81% respectively.

At 2.54 p.m., Sensex lost 221.15 points or 1.64% at 13,297.65. It also touched a high of 13,620.74 and a low of 13,127.96.

In contrast, the broad based Nifty stood at 4,016.65, down 58.25 points. It also touched a high of 4,116.70 and a low of 3,974.60.

The overall market breadth was negative as it saw 928 advancements as against 1,644 declinations.

London/New York - Britain's Barclays bank has agreed to buy some of the core assets of stricken US investment bank Lehman Brothers for 1 billion pounds (1.75 billion dollars), the two banks said Wednesday.

Barclays had bought Lehman's North American investment banking and trading unit for 250 million dollars, and paid 1.5 billion dollars for its New York headquarters and two data centres following negotiations in New York.

Washington - The mammoth international insurance firm American International Group Inc (AIG) early Wednesday moved to reassure policyholders over the US government's 85-billion-dollar bailout while Democrats laid the blame on the White House for failing to regulate the finance industry.

In a statement late Tuesday, AIG conceded it had "serious liquidity issues" but said it believed the loan would "protect all AIG policyholders, address rating agency concerns and give AIG the time necessary to conduct asset sales on an orderly basis."

Stock market analyst, Vishwas Agarwal stated that on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) above 13,350, some trading upmoves up to 13,876 level, will be expected only on positive news from Fed meet in US.

If any encouraging news will emerge of this meeting, investors can expect short covering to happen after 2,000 points drop, but this relief recovery cannot be considered as a come back of bull trend, it’s just a relief recovery.