Word: banking
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...years, a string of firms have partnered to build the East African Submarine Cable System, some 10,000 km of fiber-optic lines linking 21 countries from South Africa to Sudan. With work on the line started last year, the project is due for completion in 2009. The World Bank's $424 million Africa Regional Communications Infrastructure Program - a complementary scheme approved at roughly the same time - aims to have all major cities in eastern and southern Africa hooked up to the high-speed lines over the next decade. (See photos of struggle and triumph in Africa here...
There's been talk of a potential failure of Lehman Bros. for months, and the investment bank already had a near-death experience in 1998. Merrill Lynch has been labeled takeover bait for two decades. Insurers do go under from time to time...
...throw together the collapse of Lehman - the biggest-ever U.S. bankruptcy - the lightning takeover of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, concerns that giant insurer AIG is now on the brink as well, and a financial crisis that has been rolling along for more than a year now, and you get a day that will be enshrined in the history books. Whether it will go down as an economy-shattering debacle or a near miss is something we'll only figure out over the coming days and weeks. The initial reaction of U.S. stock markets - down sharply but far from...
That could happen. But another possibility is that loan losses will continue to grow to the point that the core institutions of the American financial scene - Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America in particular, but also possibly Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley - are seen as endangered. Then we'll really get to see what a bailout looks like...
...based Barclays was reportedly the one that came closest to making an offer) to sign a deal without government backing. With Lehman headed for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch was the next- most-vulnerable-looking Wall Street firm, so its CEO, John Thain, quickly inked a $29 a share sale to Bank of America that values Merrill at $50 billion. Meanwhile, AIG asked the Federal Reserve for a $40 billion loan to tide it over - a loan it seems unlikely...