Financial News

By Lisa Jucca and Gianluca Semeraro MILAN (Reuters) - The boards of Italian banks Banca Intesa and Sanpaolo IMI agreed on Saturday to merge and create an entity to rival Europe's top banks. The link-up will transform Italy's business landscape, put the new entity at the pinnacle of the country's fragmented banking system and create a national champion able to fend off takeovers by foreign banks. ...

By Ben Hirschler, European Pharmaceuticals Correspondent LONDON (Reuters) - Mid-sized drugmakers are more reliant than ever on medicines discovered outside their own laboratories, with 44 percent of revenues coming from external products in 2005, according to new research on Friday. Independent market analyst Datamonitor said the level of dependence was set to increase to at least 49 percent by  ...

Corus, which employs 24,000 people in the UK at locations including Scunthorpe and Rotherham, declined to comment on the speculation.Over the past few months Corus has attracted a number of suitors.Evraz, Russia's largest steel producer, denied yesterday that it was planning a takeover approach to Corus."The firm's managers are not involved in any M&A talks," said a spokeswoman for Evraz.Evraz ...

By Jeffrey Goldfarb EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Outgoing ITV Chief Executive Charles Allen took some parting shots at the country's television industry on Friday, calling for substantial changes at rival broadcasters the BBC and Channel 4. He also said, during a speech to an annual gathering of TV executives that is often considered a platform to advertise oneself, that he would not be interested in t ...

European stock markets turned lower Friday as gains for Vodafone Group, Belgacom and several Italian banks were not enough to counterbalance a lackluster start on Wall Street. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 indexdipped 0.1% at 5,865, while the French CAC 40 indexedged 0.2% lower at 5,102 and the German DAX 30 indexlost 0.2% at 5,803. The pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 indexeased 0.1% at 330.68. U. ...

(Updates with full report) PARIS (AFX) - Share prices closed with slight declines, drifting lower through most of the session as investors consolidated positions ahead of the weekend, while Safran surged on hopes of imminent restructuring moves for the group, dealers said. The CAC-40 finished down 1.72 points at 5,111.13, on thin volume of 2.6 bln eur. On the week, the benchmark index fell 0.5 p ...

(updates with full report) FRANKFURT (AFX) - Shares closed slightly lower as Wall Street dipped in early session trade, though takeover speculation surrounding Commerzbank provided some support to the blue chip board, dealers said. The DAX 30 index was down 2.61 points or 0.04 pct at 5,811.47, after moving between a low of 5,783.89 and a high of 5,834.07. The MDAX was at 8,041.68, up 10.44 poin ...

Shares in medical-software developer iSoft Group soared as much as 61% Friday after the company, which is facing an accounting probe, met a deadline for publishing its results and said it has managed to secure new financing arrangements. Trading in iSoft, which swung to a full-year loss of 382 million pounds ($723 million) from a profit of 5.9 million pounds in 2005, could have been suspended f ...

Jim Armitage, Evening Standard25 August 2006 POOR old Arun Sarin. The lightning-rod Vodafone chief executive raises €2bn (£1.4bn) selling a stake in a little-known Belgian mobiles firm, and still the share price barely budges. OTHER STORIES NHS firm iSoft posts £382m loss Tangled wires at Filtronic The new breed of football investors Baugur nets House of Fraser Vod ...

Two of Italy's biggest banks are to merge, forming an industry giant with a market value of 55bn euros (£37bn). The merger of Banca Intesa and rival Sanpaolo IMI will create Europe's 10th largest bank. The move, which is backed by both banks' shareholders and the Italian state, has renewed speculation over a wave of possible European bank mergers. The combined operation would dominate the domestic market, with twice as many branches in Italy as its nearest rival. Intesa and Sanpaolo are ...