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The former chief executive of ITV is to take over as executive chairman as the music group, owned by private equity house Terra Firma, seeks to raise £120m in new funds

Regulators have ordered UK banks to run a new round of tougher stress tests that assume the economy will endure a double-dip recession that would force unemployment up to 13.3 per cent

The UK banking group is looking at buying a large US retail bank as it tries to rebalance its business away from a booming investment banking franchise

Global Markets Overview: FTSE All-World index remains becalmed near six-week highs, with stock investors reluctant to push riskier assets higher without a fresh catalyst

China reported 45.7 per cent growth in exports for February from a year earlier, providing fresh evidence of a robust recovery in an economy poised to overtake Japan in size

Germany and France are stepping up pressure for urgent EU action to tighten regulation in sovereign debt markets – in particular of credit default swaps – in the wake of the Greek crisis

Gordon Brown has confirmed the Budget will be held on March 24 in what is expected to be his government’s last major political event before the start of the general election campaign

The group, headed by Terry Smith, is the largest government bond broker in Europe and has said it is likely to benefit further from any crisis in European sovereign debt

Gross government lending to state-owned lender rises by £8.5bn to £22.8bn but the group’s underlying loss falls in second half as it splits into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ banks

European countries have accused Washington of foul play after the continent’s largest aerospace and defence company pulled out of a multibillion-dollar race to supply the US military, alleging unfair ­competition

Germany’s proposal for a European Monetary Fund to bail-out crisis hit countries has hit stiff opposition from the country’s Bundesbank, which warned the initiative could prove a damaging distraction

Global Markets Overview: With fears over eurozone fiscal difficulties easing, traders are scratching around for fresh catalysts but have found little in the way of macroeconomic or corporate data

Northern Ireland’s second-largest pro-British party which has an electoral pact with the Conservative party, looks set to vote against the transfer of policing and justice powers

French and US pharmaceutical groups agree to join their animal health operations, creating a joint venture with nearly $5.3bn in annual sales

The UK’s trade deficit in goods widened in the three months to January as imports rose more quickly than exports, in spite of a near 30 per cent drop in the pound since the beginning of the financial crisis

Lord Paul, the Labour peer and donor whose ‘non-dom’ status was highlighted in the political row over Lord Ashcroft, has said he will pay full UK taxes from next year

Shares in Shanks tumble after talks with Carlyle for the private equity group to buy the waste management group end after the two sides fail to agree a price for the deal

China’s investments in US Treasury bonds are continuing ‘every day’ and should not be politicised, according to the head of China’s foreign exchange administration, which manages $2,400bn in forex reserves

Annie Leibovitz, the celebrity photographer, is turning to Colony Capital, a private equity firm better known for its real estate investments, for loans to help clean up her finances