India may have a new Finance Minister in a couple of days as Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh intends to have a full time minister for this critical portfolio.

He has reportedly apprised the Congress president and UPA chairperson, Sonia Gandhi about his work load and intentions. He is already extremely busy and a full time finance minister is indispensable to face the opposition in the Parliament amid global slowdown.

New York  - Citigroup chief executive Vikram Pandit on Friday denied reports that the finance giant was considering selling off large parts of its business.

Speaking in an internal conference call after the Wall Street Journal and others had reported on a possible breakup, Pandit said the firm had enough capital and that there were no plans to sell units, including the Smith Barney brokerage unit, Bloomberg financial news reported citing unnamed sources who listed to the call.

Citigroup's board was to meet later Friday.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are all set to get government's assistance in the wake of ongoing world economic crisis. Government may offer financial help at low rates for increasing growth of small scale industry.

Washington - The United States has moved to cut off all Iranian transactions routed through US banks to further tighten sanctions over the Islamic state's nuclear and other illicit activities, the US Treasury Department announced Thursday.

Iranian banks and other institutions could previously send transactions through US banks as long as they were initiated by a non-Iranian or American bank outside the US and ended in a non- Iranian or American bank outside the US.

Inside sources reveal that soon after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection on 15th September, Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs Group Inc. had approached Citigroup Inc. to discuss a possible merger of the two firms.  

However, the brief call made by Lloyd Blankfein (CEO - Goldman) to his Cititcorp counterpart - Vikram Pandit did not result in any serious discussion, with Pandit immediately rejecting the proposal.

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