Hollingsworth Daily Post

• The Federal Reserve will announce later its plans to stimulate the US economy, with expectations high that they will feature the reintroduction of so-called quantitative easing (QE).Many analysts expect the Fed to start pumping around $500bn (£310bn) into the economy to boost the fragile recovery.The economy grew by an annual rate of 2% between July and September - not enough to reduce high unemployment.Some analysts see QE as the last chance to get the US economy back on track.Interest rates are already close to zero, which means the Fed cannot reduce rates any further in order to boost demand - the more traditional policy used by central banks to stimulate growth.Instead, it is likely to announce a fresh round of QE, in which it would pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy by creating money to buy government bonds.The programme has been dubbed QE2, after the Fed pumped $1.75tn into the economy during the downturn in its first round of QE.
• Lloyds Banking Group says its new chief executive will be Santander UK's current boss, Antonio Horta-Osorio.He will replace the current chief executive of Lloyds, Eric Daniels, who is retiring, on 1 March.Lloyds, which is 41%-owned by the UK government, is Europe's fourth-largest bank by market value.The Portuguese banker's replacement at Santander UK will be Ana Patricia Botin, according to BBC business editor Robert Peston.
  Lloyds' share price rose more than 3% on the news, to nearly 70p, following the announcement by the UK bank, while in Madrid, Santander's shares fell 1.4% before recovering slightly.Ms Botin is the daughter of Santander's chairman, Emilio Botin. She has worked for the bank since 1988, having previously worked at investment bank JP Morgan in the US.

BBC Business News 3rd November 2010