Bernard Madoff ordered his UK company to transfer about $150m to his US firm just weeks before he allegedly confessed to running a $50bn fraud scheme, two former employees of Madoff Securities International said

The Israeli military and Palestinian militants are ignoring a UN security council resolution calling for an end to two weeks of fighting in the Gaza Strip which have killed more than 700 people

Shares of the computer games maker fell by a third in early trade after the video game developer warned it may need to start talks with its banks about covenants following disappointing sales

The crisis that has cut gas supplies to the EU moved towards resolution as Moscow agreed to let international monitors oversee the transit of Russian gas via Ukraine

Shares in Satyam Computer Services, the group at the centre of India's worst scandal in more than a decade, plunged as much as 71 per cent on worries the country's fourth largest outsourcing group might be heading towards insolvency

The German state on Thursday injected a further €10bn into Commerzbank and took a 25 per cent stake to shore up the country's second-largest lender and allow it to complete the takeover of Dresdner Bank, its ailing rival

Support is building on Wall Street for Don Kohn, vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, to succeed Timothy Geithner as president of the New York Fed, according to people familiar with the matter

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive officer, has increased the pressure on Yahoo to hand over control of its search business to his software company

The housebuilder will have slashed its headcount by 60% by March as it cuts back heavily on house completions, drops prices on new homes and increasingly relies on social housing to bolster its revenue mix