GLOBAL markets continued to rise today after strong gains yesterday.
Stock markets across Asia, the US and Europe have bounced back following a series of government interventions, including the UK Government's £37 billion part-nationalisation of Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBoS.
Investors have also been
buoyed by news that the US Government wants to finalise the details of its £400bn bank bail-out quickly.
It is set to use up to £143bn of the cash pot buying up stocks in some of the banks and providing them with much needed money.
In the UK, the FTSE 100 Index, which recorded its second-biggest one-day gain ever yesterday, continued its revival in, rising 6.45 per cent to 4531.47 points shortly after 1.30pm.
Shares in RBS, which declined yesterday as investors feared their holdings being diluted by the Government investment, returned to growth today, rising 6.5 per cent to 70p.
But HBoS was down 10 per cent at 80.6p, while Lloyds TSB fell seven per cent to 150.6p.
Today's overall gains come after financial markets in Asia rose sharply, with the Nikkei climbing by 13 per cent in morning trading and Sydney up five per cent. Shares on Wall Street rocketed by 11 per cent yesterday.
There were also strong gains in Australia after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a £4.2bn economic stimulus package.
It will allow for one-off payments to the country's low-wage earners and pensioners and follows earlier announcements of guarantees of bank deposits for three years.
According to Mr Rudd, the strategy "will strengthen the national economy and support Australian households".
Meanwhile, Britain's £50bn plan to partly nationalise major banks and guarantee a further £250bn of bank loans falls within EU rules, the EU's executive said.
EU regulators said the "innovative and well-designed support scheme" for British banks was justified because it remedies a serious disturbance in the British economy without damaging competition. They praised it for being temporary and for preventing banks from profiting from it.
Britain and others at first complained this would attract money away from their nations' banks, which at the time had no guarantee, to Irish rivals.
Six EU nations – Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Austria – have since followed suit, with guarantees and other emergency measures to save the banking system in their most unified response yet to the global financial crisis.
EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes warned that her office was now the "only neutral referee" checking that billions backing up banks won't damage competition across the economy.
"There will be problems if those measures are discriminatory or could cause negative spillovers in other member states by, for example, diverting financial flows," she said.
Following the part-nationalisation of RBS and the proposed new Lloyds TSB/HBoS group, the Scottish Government were today set to discuss what can be done to boost the country's economy.
A special economic cabinet meeting was to be chaired by First Minister Alex Salmond, while at the House of Commons, MPs were set to debate new laws to stop British banks going bust.
The full article contains 531 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
