BRICS: India is the first choice to get the presidency of BRICS Development Bank

Brazil: One day after the FIFA world cup has ended, it was another big ocassion for Brazil to host the BRICS summit. It is the first major foreign tour for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi where he joined the leaders from the five member nations. It was concluded that all members will have equal shareholding in the proposed $50 bn BRICS Development Bank and the presidency will to go to India first of all.

BRICS Development Bank's headquarters will be located in Shanghai, China. Being one of the strongest member of BRICS, the first rotational presidency of the bank will go to India.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping,South African Jacob Zuma and Brazil's Dilma Rousseff were grouping with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at sixth summit at this seaside Brazilian city, Fortaleza.

As per the sources, each country would have a shareholding of $10 billion as India insisted to an equal shareholding so that no one country dominates as in the World Bank.

Bank of America : Cutting up to 36,000 jobs

On thursday, Bank of America said that it plans to cut up to 36,000 jobs over the next 3 years as the financial giant adjusts to a recession and completes the pending acquisition of brokerage firm Merrill Lynch & Co.

This comes as the latest wave of mass layoffs in the troubled financial sector, which has been crippled by the credit crunch and the failure of large institutions such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc . More than 220,000 jobs already have been lost across the sector this year, according to labor-tracking firm Challenger Gray & Christmas and to reflect the current recessionary environment," the bank said in a statement. The weak economy "is affecting the level of business activity," it added.

Still, the bank said it continues to do business actively with all of its clients and has attracted deposits and new customers. It also stressed that it's still actively offering loans through all of its credit product lines.
Bank of America's reductions represent one of the largest rounds of layoffs in the history of the financial-services industry. Citigroup Inc. said last month that it plans to cut about 50,000 staff.

Challenger Gray said last week that the financial sector cut 91,356 jobs in November, the second-worst month for industry layoffs since September 2001. The news from Bank of America came the same day that the U.S. Labor Department reported that the number of first-time filings for state unemployment benefits jumped by 11% to 573,000 last week -- marking the highest point for jobless claims in 26 years. The number of people collecting unemployment benefits rose by 338,000 to stand at 4.43 million. Full Article Read here