The competitors have yet again been surprised by the State Bank of India (SBI), which earlier created hype in the home loan market and this time it has slashed interest rates on loans for new cars. Furthermore, SBI, the country's biggest bank has also reduced its lending rate against warehouse receipts for farmers.

Geneva  - Shares in UBS tumbled badly Friday, a day after the United States authorities issued a lawsuit against the bank demanding that it hand over about 52,000 names of clients.

However, the Swiss federal administrative court later issued a temporary order banning the transfer of any data to the US until it heard a case brought by UBS clients against handing over their information.

Geneva  - Shares in UBS tumbled badly Friday, a day after the United States authorities issued a lawsuit against the bank demanding that it hand over about 52,000 names of clients.

At one point in early morning trading the stocks dropped 17 per cent, and ultimately closed the day at 11 Swiss francs, down 14 per cent from its opening price.

The bank, the largest in Switzerland, said it would challenge the US lawsuit.

Mexico City - Mexico's central bank cut the leading interest rate by 25 basic points Friday to leave it at 7.5 per cent.

This was the second interest rate cut in Mexico in little over a month.

The Bank of Mexico said the global financial crisis continued to get tougher, and said that, although inflation has shown a downward trend since January, "the strong financial turbulence that was observed recently represents a risk."

Geneva  - Shares in UBS tumbled badly Friday, a day after the United States authorities issued a lawsuit against the bank demanding that it hand over about 52,000 names of clients.

At one point in early morning trading the stocks dropped 17 per cent, and ultimately closed the day at 11 Swiss francs, down 14 per cent from its opening price.

The bank, the largest in Switzerland, said it would challenge the US lawsuit.

Amsterdam - The price of shares in Dutch bank and insurer ING Bank continued its free fall on Friday.

Half an hour after trading began at the Amsterdam stock exchange ING shares had lost 7.61 per cent and stood at 4.26 euros (5.41 dollars) per share.

The continued drop in share value was triggered following the publication of ING's final quarterly report on Wednesday.

The report said the bank had suffered a loss of 3.7 billion euros in 2008, compared with a profit of 2.4 billion euros in the same period in
2007.

ING's net loss for all of 2008 amounted to 729 million euros, compared with a net profit of 9.2 billion euros in 2007.