Washington - As a mammoth bankruptcy and a surprise takeover shook the US financial industry, two Wall Street stalwarts were under pressure from the federal government to help bail out yet another major firm.

The US Federal Reserve has asked Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JP Morgan Chase & Co - among the few large finance firms still in the black - to provide up to 75 billion dollars in short-term loans help prop up insurance conglomerate American International Group Inc (AIG), The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Tokyo - Tokyo stocks were down sharply early Tuesday in the first trading in the Japanese market since the latest Wall Street banking crisis, including the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers and the struggles of insurance giant AIG.

Opening trading after being closed Monday for a Japanese holiday, the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average at 9:22 am was down 563.59 points, or 4.61 per cent, to 
11,651.17. It was the first drop below the 12,000 mark since March.

Wellington - The New Zealand stock market - the first in the world to start trading every day - fell nearly 3 per cent Tuesday morning in the wake of slumps on Wall Street and in London amid the deepening US financial crisis.

The benchmark index of top 50 stocks fell 96 points to 3,223, a drop of 2.8 per cent in the first two-and-a-half hours' trading after opening down 2.2 per cent on Monday night.

Sydney - Australian shares

New York/Washington  - The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc and fears of more looming bank failures sent US investors running for the hills Monday in the latest sign of a deepening credit crisis in the United States.

Monday's trading on Wall Street saw the steepest selloff since the lending crunch began last year, as the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 500 points - some 4.4 per cent - in its biggest one-day drop since October 2002.

New York  - Major US stock indices posted some of their worst losses in years on Monday in response to a significant deepening of the credit crisis and fears of widespread banking failures in the United States.

The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 500 points - some 4.4 per cent - and closed below 11,000 for its biggest one-day drop since the September 2001 terrorist attacks. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index plunged more than 4.7 per cent for its lowest close since October 2005.