Business: Financial/Banking Industry

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co and Citigroup Inc agreed on Monday to a 44-hour truce in their fight over regional bank Wachovia Corp after a weekend of legal wrangling.

NEW YORK - Wachovia, Citigroup and Wells Fargo on Monday agreed to a standstill of all formal litigation activity — a sign that the banks and the Federal Reserve are working feverishly to reach an agreement over the fate of Wachovia.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - World Bank president Robert Zoellick said Monday that the current financial turmoil highlighted the need for a "new multilateralism" to replace outdated structures.

WASHINGTON - The Group of Seven industrialized countries is outmoded and should be replaced with a new entity that would include growing economies in Asia and Latin America, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Monday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Treasury said Monday that the finance chiefs of the Group of Seven industrialized nations will meet this week ahead of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US court battle left the fate of troubled lender Wachovia Corp. in limbo Monday with Wells Fargo pressing to close its acquisition despite a challenge from banking rival Citigroup.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As part of a settlement with state attorneys general that could be worth as much as $8.6 billion, Bank of America Corp said on Monday it would cut interest rates and principal on some troubled mortgages originated by Countrywide Financial Corp.

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve is brokering discussions between Wells Fargo & Co and Citigroup Inc over which of the banks will buy Wachovia Corp's assets, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.

NEW YORK - The battle for control of troubled bank Wachovia tilted toward Wells Fargo Sunday as a state appeals court blocked a lower court ruling that had favored rival bidder Citigroup.

FRANKFURT, Germany - The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank offered more than $60 billion to markets Monday to try to keep the financial sector flush with cash.

BERLIN - Germany on Sunday guaranteed all private bank accounts and negotiated a 50 billion euro ($69 billion) bailout deal for Hypo Real Estate AG as Europe's second largest economy sought to ward off financial crisis.

SAN FRANCISCO - Here's a safe bet for uncertain times: A lot of banks won't survive the next year of upheaval despite the U.S. government's $700 billion plan to restore order to the financial industry.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US banking giant Citigroup said it had obtained a court injunction to freeze a proposed merger between rivals Wachovia and Wells Fargo.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Californian bank Wells Fargo announced a 15.1-billion-dollar deal to buy troubled US rival Wachovia in an attempt to outflank Citigroup and its government-backed rescue plan.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co agreed to buy Wachovia Corp for about $15 billion, upstaging a government-backed Citigroup Inc bid for Wachovia's banking assets with a deal that would catapult it into the top ranks of national consumer banking.

WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) - The fate of a $5 billion deposit dominated the first day of Washington Mutual Inc's bankruptcy proceedings in a Delaware court on Friday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Wells Fargo announced a 15.1-billion-dollar bid for troubled banking rival Wachovia on Friday in an attempt to outflank Citigroup and its government-backed rescue plan.

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Wall Street ended its worst week in seven years with another tumble on Friday on fears that the $700 billion financial rescue package may not unblock credit markets and stave off a U.S. recession.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Stock markets rallied Friday as investors looked to the US Congress for quick and final action on a 700-billion-dollar Wall Street bailout and took heart from a new US bank takeover.

ZURICH/NEW YORK (Reuters) - UBS AG said it is cutting another 2,000 jobs at its troubled investment bank and closing most of its commodities business but will remain a universal bank and will not quit investment banking completely.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The House of Representatives was poised to vote on a $700 billion bailout package for U.S. banks, under pressure from all sides as the effort to head off a spreading financial crisis hung in the balance.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of Wachovia Corp jumped 64 percent to $6.42 before the bell on Friday after news that the bank had agreed to merge with Wells Fargo & Co .

ZURICH, Switzerland - Swiss bank UBS AG will cut 2,000 jobs at its troubled investment banking unit, most of which will be lost in the U.S. and Britain, an official said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co will not offer a job to Alan Fishman, chief executive of Washington Mutual , the struggling regional bank it bought a week ago, according to an internal memo obtained by Reuters.

TOKYO - Japan's Norinchukin Bank said Friday it has acquired a 0.5 percent stake worth about about 30 billion yen, or $286 million, in France's Credit Agricole SA, which has been shoring up its capital base after being hit by U.S. credit-related losses.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - John Thain, the Merrill Lynch & Co Inc chief executive who engineered the firm's sale to Bank of America Corp, will head investment banking, securities and wealth management at the new company -- at least for now.

U.S. banks large and small are buckling under the pressure of the credit crisis. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has seized 13 institutions this year, most recently Washington Mutual. The regulator, which maintains a list of "problem" banks, doesn't disclose which others raise red flags. But one measure, the so-called Texas Ratio, may offer a clue.

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss bank UBS may announce plans to cut another 1,900 jobs in its investment banking, equities and fixed income units at its shareholder meeting on Thursday, Bloomberg said on Wednesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of Barclays Plc , retained its spot as top underwriter in the $3 trillion federal agency debt markets in 2008 year-to-date from a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters.

During the mid-1990s, Wachovia's merger-mad chief executive, Ed Crutchfield, once famously joked that the key to persuading another bank to sell to him was to simply stack "$1 billion bills" on the table until the target relented. Now, though, it's Wachovia that is being taken over, and its buyer, Citigroup , got Wachovia's core banking franchise for a mere buck a share, as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. gave Citi the rights to Wachovia's banking operations just for agreeing to assume a portion of any losses from its loan portfolio.