Economy, Banks | featured news

Sub-Saharan Africa's economic growth is set to outpace the global average over the next three years, according to the World Bank. Higher commodities, increasing investment and a general pick-up in the world economy should all boost the continent's growth to more than 5%.

Japan is making a sweeping shift in its monetary policy, aiming to spur inflation and get the world's third-largest economy out of a long, debilitating slump. Bowing to demands from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for more aggressive monetary easing, the Bank of Japan announced Thursday a policy overhaul intended to double the money supply and achieve a 2 percent inflation target at the "earliest possible time, with a time horizon of about two years."

Leaders of the five BRICS nations fueling global economic growth plan the creation of a development bank in a direct challenge to the World Bank that they accuse of Western bias.

The central bank affirmed that it would keep up its existing efforts to stimulate the economy, even though it expected a return to moderate growth.

Europe has spent hundreds of billions of euros rescuing its banks but may have lost an entire generation of young people in the process, the president of the European Parliament said.

The European Central Bank has left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a record low of 0.75 percent, holding off on further stimulus even though the euro area remains stuck in recession.

The data is likely to put pressure on the European Central Bank to cut interest rates at its next meeting.

U.S. banks are ending the year with their best profits since 2006 and fewer failures than at any time since the 2008 financial crisis.

Britain named Canadian central bank chief Mark Carney on Monday as the next governor of the Bank of England, springing the surprise choice of a foreigner to help steer the world's sixth-largest economy out of stagnation.

Major banks have announced some 160,000 job cuts since early last year and with more lay-offs to come as the industry restructures, many will leave the shrinking sector for good as redundancies outpace new hires by roughly two-to-one.