Retweet this to your followers? Cancel Retweet Continue reading →

BY SHAYNDI RAICE, ANUPREETA DAS AND GINA CHON Less than three days before Facebook Inc.'s initial public offering, Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman decided to boost the number of shares the company would offer investors by 25%, said people familiar with the planning. His main adviser at lead underwriter Morgan Stanley assured him there was plenty of demand, they said. That decision by the 41-year-old Facebook executive may have doomed any real chance the social-networking company had that its stock would jump on its first day of trading—a hallmark of successful IPOs. On Tuesday, the second full day of trading, Facebook shares fell $3.03, or 8.9%, to $31, ...BY SHAYNDI RAICE, ANUPREETA DAS AND GINA CHON Less than three days before Facebook Inc.'s initial public ... Continue reading →

BY NOÉMIE BISSERBE AND DAVID ENRICH PARIS—Crédit Agricole SA, a giant French bank facing mounting losses in Greece, said Tuesday it is redoubling efforts to get help from an unlikely source: the Greek central bank. Crédit Agricole bought Emporiki Bank of Greece SA in 2006, part of an ill-fated strategy to expand into fast-growing markets. The acquisition saddled the French lender with billions of euros in losses and is one reason its shares have plunged more than 70% over the past year. At Crédit Agricole's annual meeting Tuesday, held underneath Paris's iconic Louvre museum, a parade of shareholders yelled at executives about their Greek problems. "It's ...BY NOÉMIE BISSERBE AND DAVID ENRICH PARIS—Crédit Agricole SA, a giant French bank facing mounting losses in Greece, said ... Continue reading →

MILAN — Barclays PLC (BCS) is looking to sell all its Italian branches in an attempt to focus more on core activities to boost its profitability, a person familiar with the matter told Dow Jones Newswires on Tuesday. "The bank has received three letters of interest — two from Italian entities and one from a non-Italian one — for around 180-200 branches in Italy," the person said. "It will be a tough sell, because these branches are losing money, in the region of some tens of millions a year. They might end up closing those branches," the person added. "The decision follows a strategic review the bank did with consultants earlier this year." A spokeswoman for Barclays in London said the bank never comments on ... Continue reading →

Or the Greek-German relationship, told through tourism. I ask Germans to choose Greece for their summer holidays. That’s Alexis Tsipras speaking to reporters in Berlin on Tuesday – and we don’t think it was a joke. He may not want the bailout memorandum, but he sure wants the tourist euros. Tourism makes up around a fifth of the Greek economy (directly and indirectly), and Germans are some of the highest-spending guests, so as the economy struggles through its fifth year of recession, holidaymakers are ever more important. Greece received a boost last year as the unrest in the Middle East made countries such as Egypt unattractive destinations. But it looks like German tourists won’t be propping up the Greek economy so much this summer (even ... Continue reading →

By Jessica Mead The euro crisis is bad enough, but its rapidly growing lexicon is ugly too. Banks (and a few journalists too, it must be admitted) have taken in recent months to creating some gruesome word-mashes to describe the events in Greece and the rest of the region. It all really started with ‘Grexit’ (Greek euro exit, to most ordinary folk) — a term coined by Citigroup back in February. Initially met with groans from most quarters, the quasi-word is now in common usage among analysts and investors across the board. Now it seems Citigroup has created a monster. Monday, Deutsche Bank came up with the idea for a currency for Greece to use without fully leaving the monetary union. Its nickname, inevitably, is ... Continue reading →