» Christine Lagarde, France's finance minister, launched her official bid to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as managing director of the IMF. Ms Lagarde is the front-runner for the position. But there was growing disquiet in the developing world over the convention that only Europeans should be considered for the fund's top job, with the IMF representatives of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa issuing a joint statement on the matter. Ms Lagarde acknowledged their concerns, but said that being European should be neither a "handicap, nor an asset" when assessing her qualifications. See article » The American government reaped a small profit from the first sale of its shares in American International Group since bailing out the insurer in 2008. The Treasury sold 200m shares and AIG a further 100m in the offering, which was priced at $29 a share, just above the Treasury's break-even point of $28.73. It hopes to sell the remainder of its stake, now reduced to around 77%, over the next two years.
With petrol prices high… » America's Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged an oil-trading firm, two of its affiliates and two traders with attempting to manipulate oil prices in 2008. The regulator alleges that the defendants purchased substantial positions in the physical market for West Texas Intermediate oil to give the impression of a shortage, and at the same time bought oil futures to profit from the subsequent rise in prices. It is only the second case brought by the CFTC in its three-year-long investigation into oil-price speculation.  » BP had some good news of sorts when Mitsui agreed to contribute $1.1 billion towards the cost of last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Japanese conglomerate held a 10% stake in the stricken Macondo well. It is the first time that one of BP's partners in the project has recognised that the oil firm was not the only culprit, though Mitsui agreed to settle for less than half of what BP was asking. » David Einhorn, an influential hedge-fund manager, called for Steve Ballmer's resignation as chief executive of Microsoft. Mr Ballmer has come under increasing pressure from investors lately for the feeble performance of Microsoft's share price. » Yandex, described as "Russia's Google", made its stockmarket debut on NASDAQ, the latest in a string of big initial public offerings in America by domestic and foreign internet companies. On May 19th LinkedIn, a networking site for professionals, saw its share price soar by 109% on its market entry. But with the shares of some recently floated tech companies, such as Renren, a Chinese firm, now trading for less than their issue prices, analysts have warned that the evidence is mounting of another tech bubble.
All that glisters is not gold » Glencore entered the FTSE 100 on its stockmarket debut in London. It also listed in Hong Kong. Though the Swiss-based commodities-trading company's IPO was eagerly awaited, its stock ended the first day's trading below its offer price of £5.30 ($8.60).  » Sony revealed an unexpected annual net loss of ¥259 billion ($3.2 billion) for the year to March 31st, mostly because it wrote off deferred tax credits. Operating profit at the consumer-electronics company rose. Sony also forecast that the earthquake that hit Japan on March 11th would cost it around ¥150 billion this year because of disruption to its supply chain. The recent hacking of its PlayStation Network is expected to cost a fortune. See article » Square, a mobile-commerce company run by Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter's founders, unveiled a payment system for retailers that replaces cash registers with iPads, which can sync with an app on customers' smartphones. Square's app is a rival to the systems being developed that use similar Near-Field Communication pay terminals. See article » Some followers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement filed a lawsuit in San Jose that accuses Cisco of helping China to construct a network surveillance system that tracked its members and Chinese dissidents. The allegations have surfaced before, in a Senate hearing. Cisco insists that there is "no basis" for the legal action and that it does not customise its products to "facilitate censorship or repression". » Standard & Poor's lowered its credit outlook for Italy from stable to negative. The main Italian stockmarket swooned.
El Gordo » The Spanish government signalled that it planned to go ahead with a plan to privatise the national lottery, which would create the world's biggest listed gambling company. The sale of 30% of the company that runs the lottery could fetch up to €7.5 billion ($10.6 billion) and go towards reducing Spain's debt pile. | 
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