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The finance minister of the island nation, Vassos Shiarly, criticized international lenders on Friday for imposing losses on banks with exposure to Greece.

China's second surprise rate cut and lending reform in the space of a month shows that Beijing wants borrowing to play a greater role in reviving an economy struggling with its weakest pace of growth since the global financial crisis.

Credit rating agencies turned up the heat on Barclays Plc, threatening to lower its credit ratings on concerns over who will run the bank following the departure of Chief Executive Bob Diamond and an uncertain strategy.

European leaders reached a "breakthrough" deal early Friday to ease the recapitalization of struggling banks that should help draw the eurozone back from the brink of a gathering crisis. Under the deal, European leaders agreed to create a single supervisory body to oversee the eurozone's banks which could use the single currency area's rescue funds, the European Financial Stability Facility or European Stability Mechanism, to aid banks directly without adding to governments' debt.

Shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. tumbled in premarket trading Thursday as a published report said that the bank's losses on a bad trade may reach as much as $9 billion - far higher than the estimated $2 billion loss disclosed last month.

The new center of U.S. mortgage lending is a nondescript office building in the American heartland, far from the California subprime lenders and the New York investment banks that drove the housing market into a bust.

Spain's government said Friday it plans to make its official request for EU aid for its banking sector Monday, as discussions continue on ways to inject European aid funds directly into ailing Spanish banks.

Moody's Investors Service Friday defended its decision to issue a slew of downgrades to Europe's biggest lenders after several of the continent's banks hit out over the "backward" nature of the review.

Moody's Investors Service lowered the credit ratings of 15 major banks Thursday, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, saying their long-term prospects for profitability and growth are shrinking. The ratings agency said it was especially concerned about banks with significant financial markets businesses because those markets have become so volatile. Some of the largest European banks were also downgraded, including Barclays, Deutsche Bank and HSBC.

Spain’s borrowing costs soared Tuesday to levels that have sent other euro members into the arms of international lenders, calling into question the viability of a bailout deal for Spain’s banking sector even as other troubled countries were weighing whether they could make similar rescue arrangements.