The Traderszone Network

Progress in completing banking reforms to plug gaps highlighted by the 2007-09 financial crisis is too slow and is being hampered by fierce industry lobbying, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said banks were holding more capital now than they did in the run-up to the financial crisis when taxpayers had to shore up the sector. “The bad news is that progress is still too slow, and the finish line is still too far off,” Lagarde told a conference on economic inclusion in London.

The hunt for money hidden in Swiss bank accounts by U.S. citizens has become a global chase, with prosecutors tracing records to Singapore, the Cook Islands and elsewhere as U.S. authorities increase the pressure on Swiss lenders to turn over evidence, according to officials. Kathryn Keneally, head of the Justice Department’s tax division, said in an interview that in the wake of a guilty plea to criminal charges by Credit Suisse Group AG, the U.S. expects to collect more evidence pointing to suspect accounts beyond Switzerland’s borders.

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Safety regulators have quietly placed two extra conditions on construction of TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline after learning of potentially dangerous construction defects involving the southern …

General Motors (GM.N) India said it would begin exporting vehicles from the country and start selling a left-hand-drive version of its Chevrolet Beat hatchback to Chile in the first quarter of 2015. The company said it would begin production of the cars meant for export at its Talegaon plant, located in western India, in the second half of this year. General Motors has two factories in India that can build a combined 282,000 vehicles annually, but it has been utilising less than a third of their total capacity.

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World shares hovered just off an all-time high and the euro was steady on Tuesday, as the European Central Bank made sure there was little doubt in investors minds that global liquidity will continue. The rest of Europe’s main bourses, which saw mostly steady starts, had made gains on Monday following European election results. Asset markets around the world continue to be supported by record-low interest rates in most of the world’s big economies.

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Pfizer said Monday that it does not intend to make a takeover offer for British drugmaker AstraZeneca, pulling the plug for now on what would have been the largest deal in the industry’s history. The announcement …

At first glance, the Monster Tron T1 headphones sold on Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Taobao site are a tempting offer for audiophiles looking for state-of-the-art hi-fi equipment. But sellers omit …