Singapore  - DBS Group, Singapore's largest bank, announced 900 jobs cuts after it suffered a sharp drop in third quarter profit, a news report said Saturday.

About half of the retrenchments, which amount to 6 per cent of the company's total staff will affect its Singapore operations, a report by the Straits Times newspaper said. The cuts are to be carried out before Christmas, the report added.

DBS employs 7,600 staff in Singapore and 4,200 in Hong Kong, which will also be affected by the cuts.

The Bank of England’ s monetary policy group has slashed the official bank rate paid on commercial bank reserves by 1.5% points to 3%.

Privates and foreign banks are likely to cut interest rates in the coming days. Public sector banks have already decided to reduce interest rates following decrease in key interest rates by the Reserve Bank of India. Personal and commercial loans would be available at lower rates after cutting lending rates by public and private banks. It is to be noted that reserve bank is taking many steps to inject more liquidity in the market. Recently, it has cut cash reserve ratio, SLR and Repo rate leading to injection of more than Rs 2,60,000 crore into the system.

London - The Bank of England Thursday slashed interest rates by a hefty one-and-a-half percentage points to 3 per cent in its most dramatic effort yet to soften the impact of a looming recession.

The shock cut decided by the bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MCP) followed calls from business leaders for a significant reduction in the key lending rate, but the maximum cut expected had been one percentage point.

Analysts said the decision underlined that as inflationary fears were receding, the risk of deflation was now emerging as a key threat.

Mumbai, Nov 6 : State Bank of India loans will now be cheaper with the bank deciding to cut its Prime Lending Rate (PLR) by 0.75 per cent from Monday.

SBI Chairman O P Bhatt told reporters in Mumbai on Thursday that the bank''s PLR will now stand reduced to 13 per cent from 13.75 per cent.

Several public sector banks such as Punjab National Bank, Union Bank, UCO Bank and Syndicate Bank have already effected a cut in their PLRs.

On Tuesday, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram met heads of public sector banks following which bankers had promised to cut their lending rates by up to 0.75 per cent.

San Francisco - Wells Fargo, the biggest bank on the US west coast, said Wednesday it would issue 10 billion dollars in stock to help pay for the takeover of Wachovia Corp.

Wells Fargo triumphed in a bitter takeover struggle against Citigroup weeks ago to acquire the troubled Wachovia - a takeover that came amidst massive turmoil and bankruptcies in the finance industry.