Amsterdam - Dutch bank and insurance giant ING Group suffered a loss of 478 million euros (609.93 million dollars) in the third quarter of 2008, the firm's first-ever quarterly loss, ING reported on Wednesday.

The quarterly report said the loss was partly the result of write-downs of more than 1.5 billion euros on ING's various assets, including those related to the US real-estate market.

In the third quarter of 2007, ING posted a net profit of 2.3 billion euros.

Wednesday's quarterly report did not come as a surprise.

Paris - French investment bank Natixis lost 975 million euros (1.23 billion dollars) in trading last month and is to issue a fourth-quarter profits warning, the business daily La Tribune reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, the losses were registered in trading with shares as well as currencies and interest rates.

It remained unclear if the loss was due to unauthorized deals carried out by a small group of traders, as was reportedly the case with Natixis's parent company Caisse d'Epargne, which lost 751 million euros in early October.

New York - Struggling US insurer American International Group (AIG) Monday got another lift from the US government in the form of a 40-billion-dollar investment in preferred stock, once again underlining the key position held by the firm in the world economy.

AIG has already received loans totalling 143 billion dollars.

The White House said the new lifeline will allow AIG to restructure the current loans "in a way that will not hurt the overall economy."

Washington - The world's largest banking lobby Monday called for additional government intervention to help avoid a global recession, but warned that any state takeovers of the private sector must be temporary.

In an open letter to US President George W Bush, who will host a summit of the world's 20 leading economies in Washington on Saturday, the Institute of International Finance called on world leaders to better coordinate their efforts to stabilize the financial system.

Riga - A government bailout of Latvia's largest indigenous bank, Parex Banka, was set to be finalized Monday after the European Commission (EC) signalled it would not block the deal.

Latvian Finance Ministry spokesperson Diana Berzina told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that an "unofficial okay" had been received from the EC along with their comments on the deal.

She added that final confirmation from the EC was likely one or two days after the legal document was due to be signed in a closed meeting on Monday night.