Munich  - Germany's government has told Hypo Real Estate (HRE), the biggest German casualty of the world financial crash, that it will obtain 90-per-cent control of the bank by way of an equity issue.

HRE disclosed the move in a board statement Friday from its head office in Munich.

Berlin would ask the shareholders at a meeting on June 2 to vote for an increase in equity from just under 700 million euros (925 million dollars) at present to 6.3 billion euros, with the German state pumping in all the new funds.

The liquidity position of the cash-strapped realtor United Ltd is expected to improve, with the company recently raising Rs 1,625 crore at Rs 38.50 per share through qualified institutional placement (QIP) issue. The proceeds from this sale of new shares to qualified institutions will help the country's second-biggest real estate developer repay a part of its more than Rs 8,900-crore debt.

According to domestic institutional investors, the debt-ridden Indian real estate bigwig Unitech Ltd intends raising Rs. 1,250 crore by way of a qualified institutional placement (QIP) of shares, for the repayment of part of its debt of more than Rs. 8,000 crore.

An unnamed company official said that the funds, likely to be raised by the end of this month, would help the company cut its debt by Rs 1,000 crore by June this year.

London, April 7: The owners of the Empire State Building have announced that they are planning to turn the tall skyscraper ‘green’, by investing an additional 20 million dollars to reduce its carbon footprint and energy consumption.

According to a report in the Guardian, the current owners of the 102-storey office block, Wien and Malkin, hope to buck the economic trend by making the building environment friendly and charging higher rents.

Washington - The United States launched a new crackdown Monday on mortgage fraud that may have contributed to the country's worst housing downturn in decades.

The US Justice Department, Treasury and other government agencies announced a joint effort to target bogus companies that have sprouted up offering mortgage refinancing and foreclosure help.

More than 3 million people were in foreclosure in 2008, a record that helped drive down US home prices and spurred the financial crisis that has plunged the world into recession.