Shops in the US are opening earlier than usualy in an effort to secure sales on Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping date of the year. As a result, millions of Americans cut short their Thanksgiving to head to shops.
According to the National Retail Federation, it is revealed that up to 152 million people are looking to shop over the three days after Thanksgiving, with many queueing during nights in order to secure “doorbuster” discounts unveiled on the day.

When preparing to lobby regulators to water down the rules, bankers have warned that new curbs for US banks restricting capability in trading with their own capital will hit the liquidity and demand for eurozone government bond markets at a time when both are in supply shortage.
The Volcker rule, which was passed as part of the Dodd-Frank reform package, will ban proprietary trading by all US banks starting in July 2012. Bankers have been warning that it would hit liquidity from equities to corporate bonds ever since the draft regulations came out in October. However, eurozone sovereign bonds have raised special concerns as US banks have historically taken an important role in a market that has witnessed flows dry up due to worries over spiralling debt as well as the health of economies like Italy.
According to bankers and traders, it is said that “prop” trading is a big part of the US presence in the eurozone debt market of $13,000bn. However, exact numbers are difficult to come by.

Switzerland has enjoyed a reputation for unwavering confidentiality for quite a long time. This has helped the country become the world’s largest offshore tax haven, managing more than $2.1tr of foreigners’ money.
However, the nation’s culture of banking secrecy are experiencing significant changes, as US authorities launched a criminal investigation into 11 financing institutions, which are suspected to help great number of Americans hide money from the US IRS.
Switzerland’s second-biggest bank–Credit Suisse, has begun handing over the details on 130 of its US clients to American tax evasion investigators. As a result, it become the second big Swiss bank to do so in the past two years.

Europe’s having a tough time at the moment. However, for some alert businessmen, it means greater opportunity for business development and expanssion.
With traditional lenders in the Europe shrinking to meet regulatory capital requirements, the financing arm of General Electric is planning to take advantage of the woes of banks in the area via stealing lending business and acquiring assets.
According to head of GE Capital in Europe–Richard Laxer, it is said that the company is looking to grow by around 10% a year in this target market.

The world’s biggest maker of earth-moving equipment–Caterpillar, has strengthened its presence in the market of mining machinery via proposing an acquisition deal of $886m to purchase the Chinese ERA Mining Machinery, which is a manufacturer of underground coal-mining equipment.
The deal was built on Caterpillar’ $7.6bn purchase of another maker of mining machinery–Bucyrus International last year, which managed to transform Caterpillar into the world’s biggest supplier of large mining equipment.
Buying ERA would enable Caterpillar to make further expansion into China.