The Traderszone Network

BENGALURU/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Shares of Google Inc rose nearly 12 percent after the Web search leader’s profit beat forecasts for the first time in the last six quarters, boosted by strong advertising revenue and comments by its new chief financial officer on disciplined spending. Google rallied to $673.50 in extended trading after closing at $601.78 on Nasdaq. Google remains the most valuable publicly traded U.S. company after Apple Inc.

Europe moved to re-open funding to Greece’s stricken economy on Thursday after the parliament in Athens approved a new bailout program in a fractious vote that left the government without a majority. The European Central Bank increased emergency funding for Greek lenders, although capital controls will have to remain in place to avoid a run on the banks when they reopen on Monday.

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Samsung C&T Corp shareholders on Friday voted to approve an $8 billion all-share takeover offer from sister firm Cheil Industries Inc, a close-run but key win for Samsung Group’s founding family as it prepares for generational succession at South Korea’s largest conglomerate. Samsung C&T’s co-Chief Executive Officer Choi Chi-hun said at an extraordinary shareholder meeting called to vote on the deal that 69.53 percent of votes cast were in favor of the merger. U.S.

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Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said on Thursday she was open to raising a threshold for determining a bank’s systemic importance and indicated that U.S. lenders had made progress in their submissions of so-called living will plans this month. The tacit nod of approval from the Fed chief is a good sign for Wall Street, as a rejection can be costly, though Yellen also made clear the U.S. central bank will not hesitate to reject certain plans when it completes its assessment.

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Wall Street’s self-funded watchdog fined a unit of Barclays PLC $800,000 for violations related to how the bank reported stock trades over a more than two-year period, hampering the regulator’s ability to properly monitor the market. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said late Wednesday that Barclays Capital did not properly update its electronic systems to comply with regulations from August 2009 that required that executing brokers report trades, as well as the name of the executing parties of the trades, to FINRA. As a result, between Aug. 3, 2009 and Dec.

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U.S. conglomerate General Electric (GE.N) has offered concessions in an attempt to counter EU regulatory concerns about its 12.4-billion-euro ($13.49 billion) bid for French peer Alstom’s power unit, its biggest ever acquisition. “GE confirms it has submitted remedies to the European Commission in relation to the GE-Alstom transaction. The concessions will have to address the European Commission’s worries that the deal could hurt competition as it would result in the merged gas turbine company competing with only German rival Siemens (SIEGn.DE).

Shockwaves from a drop in Chinese car demand are reverberating in Wolfsburg, Germany and Detroit, Michigan, where VW (VOWG_p.DE) and General Motors (GM.N) are feeling the effects of a slowdown in a market that has been their big profit engine. Both Volkswagen and GM are heavily exposed to China, which remains a growth market, but last week cut its 2015 forecast for vehicle sales. Barclays downgraded GM’s stock to “equal weight” from “overweight” on Thursday, saying it was likely to face the sharpest of the China headwinds among the U.S. autos and auto part makers it covers.