Business Nwews and markets :live

Business news and markets: live
Stock, bond and commodities markets around the world have slumped this morning as investors take flight at news the Fed's QE3 could end by mid-2014.

Asian stocks outside Japan suffered their biggest daily loss in nearly 18 months, while India's currency hit a record low. Speaking to Reuters, a Photo: AFP




By Denise Roland, Szu Ping Chan and Ben Martin
5:25PM BST 20 Jun 2013
125 Comments

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2013-06-20 17:33:44.0
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/business-news-markets-live/10131484/Business-news-and-markets-live.html?service=artBody
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• Fed calling time on QE3 sparks global market sell-off
• Eurogroup meets to decide on bank bail-out fund
• China cash crunch deepens as central bank stands ground
• Gold slumps to two-and-a-half year low
• Five of Britain’s biggest lenders have £27bn capital shortfall
• Asian markets go "kaboom" after Bernanke speech

Latest
17.25 US airline Delta has won approval from regulators to buy a 49pc stake in Virgin Atlantic.
The US Justice Department and European Commission said the deal did not pose an antitrust threat. The stake is currently owned by Singapore Airlines.
In a statement, the EC said:
The Commission's investigation confirmed that in all markets the combined entity would continue to face competition from several strong competitors, notably British Airways and American Airlines.
Delta and Virgin Atlantic's non-stop services overlap on the London-New York and London-Boston routes. In addition, Delta's one-stop services overlap with Virgin Atlantic's non-stop services on several routes between the UK and North America.
On each of the transatlantic routes where both Virgin and Delta operate, sufficiently strong players – in particular British Airways and American Airlines, which joined forces in a joint venture - are present and capable of exercising a significant competitive constraint on the combined entity. Moreover, Delta and Virgin are currently not particularly close competitors, but primarily compete against British Airways and American Airlines.
Delta still needs approval from the US Transportation Department, which it hopes to get later this year.

17.01 Commenting on today's market movers, Brenda Kelly, senior market strategist at IG, said:
Given that the UK benchmark has given up what was recently a ‘buy on the dips’ level, any relief rally will run into trouble at what is now probable resistance. The big question now is whether we are in for a watershed moment in equities. Investors have spent May scanning anxiously for signs that the rally is over, but Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke may just have fired the starting pistol on a wave of selling that might go on for weeks. Today’s market action was like a day out at Alton Towers only with more spills than thrills and a plethora of nauseating effects. Stocks in the green were few and far between with only Lloyds managing to hold firm on the day (and only barely) as plans to return the bank into private hands get underway.
16.51 After a horrible day for stock markets, dealers can finally take a breather. Trading has come to a close in London, and the FTSE 100 has tumbled 3pc, or 189.31 points, to 6,159.51. That takes the index to its lowest level since January and its biggest one-day fall since September 22, 2011, when it dropped 4.7pc. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently down 1.4pc in the US, while French, German and Spanish stock markets are all sharply lower.
16.49 Meanwhile, the former boss of Enron is another step closer to being released early from prison.
Jeffrey Skilling was jailed for 24 years and four months in 2001 for his part in one of the largest fraud scandals in US history. But Mr Skilling's lawyers will ask on Friday that his sentence be reduced to around 14 years if he drops all remaining appeals. Here's CNBC with more:
Under the proposal to be presented to Lake, Skilling's 24-year, four month prison sentence—one of the longest ever at the time in a white collar case—would be reduced to around 14 years. With credit for time served and for good behavior, Skilling could be out of prison in 2017. At that point, he will have served a little over 10 years.
In exchange, Skilling would drop all remaining appeals, including a potentially explosive motion for a new trial based on alleged misconduct by the Justice Department's elite Enron task force that prosecuted the case. Skilling's convictions on 19 criminal counts including conspiracy, fraud and insider trading would stand. What's more, $40 million that Skilling had agreed to forfeit if his appeals were unsuccessful would be turned over to victims.

16.14 Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is at it again with those gifs. Here's the latest one from her blog, where she writes that the Tumblr and Yahoo! deal has closed:
As promised, Tumblr will continue to operate as a separate business, led by David Karp as CEO. Their product roadmap, their team, and tone will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators and curators alike to do what they love best: create.
David and his team are redefining creative expression online, and we can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

16.00 Market bloodbath update:
FTSE 100 in London: -3pc
CAC 40 in Paris: -3.2pc
DAX 30 in Frankfurt: -3.15pc
FTSE Mib in Milan: -3pc
IBEX 35 in Madrid: -3.4pc
Dow Jones in New York: -1.4pc
S&P 500 in New York: -1.6pc

_{Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange in this file photo (Photo: AP).}