Financier and cricket mogul Allen Stanford has been found guilty by a court in Houston, Texas, of running a $7bn Ponzi scheme.

Stanford, 61, was convicted on 13 of the 14 charges.

He had pleaded not guilty to defrauding some 30,000 investors with bogus investments through his Stanford International Bank in Antigua to fund a lavish lifestyle.

He faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison for the most serious charge.

Stock markets have suffered their worst day's trading of the year. The FTSE 100 closed down 1.8%, or 109 points lower, its biggest fall since 14 December. Fears over the global economy, and the slow pace of Greece's debt swap deal, were blamed - although City experts warned against panic.

New York shared in the selloff, with the Dow Jones index currently down around 200 points.

* Greece's debt swap deal creaked on. With just two days to go, Athens appears unlikely to hit a 90% take-up rate in its Private Sector Involvement -- despite its six biggest banks all offering their support. That would mean it would deploy Collective Action Clauses - as long as the take-up rate hit 66%.

The Greek goverment put fresh pressure on its creditors to take part, warning that bond-holders who rejected the deal would not be paid out later.

Nissan will build its new compact car at its factory in Sunderland, creating 2,000 jobs and providing a major boost to one of the regions hardest hit by recession and spending cuts, the company says.

The business secretary, Vince Cable, will confirm at the Geneva Motor Show that the Nissan expansion - which will create 400 jobs at the factory and 1,600 more in the supply chain - was underwritten by £9m from the government's regional growth fund.

He will say: "The decision [from Nissan] is another clear vote of confidence in Britain's manufacturing industry, and vindicates the government's decision to put support for manufacturing at the core of its economic strategy."

China's government debt amounts to about 17.5 trillion yuan (2.78 trillion U.S. dollars), about 43 percent of the country's gross domestic product, Yang Kaisheng, president of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, said Tuesday.

The debt is composed of 10.7 trillion yuan of local government debt and 6.8 trillion yuan of central government debt, Yang said at a press conference on the sidelines of China's annual parliamentary session.

"Government debt in China now is at a controllable and secure level," said the banking magnate, citing the government work report delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday.

The investigation is yet another complication in the merger between Porsche and auto powerhouse Volkswagen.

The three employees, who remain unnamed, are accused of lying to a bank about the number of options Porsche held on VW ordinary stocks in 2009, when Porsche was in talks about the refinancing of a €10 billion loan.

When the bank questioned Porsche about its financial needs during negotiations, the three suspects undervalued the options by around €1.4 billion.

RWE said in a statement its net profit fell by 33.9 percent to €2.479 billion last year and operating profit declined by 24.3 percent to €5.814 billion on a 3.1-percent drop in revenues to €51.686 billion.

"For us, fiscal 2011 was marked by difficult economic and political framework conditions," RWE said. "The German government's nuclear energy decisions alone had a negative impact on the result of well over one billion euros."

In the wake of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, last year, the German government decided to phase out nuclear power, forcing energy suppliers to shut down their profitable large-scale power plants and also levying a tax on the reactors' fuel for their remaining lifespan.

In addition, lower sales prices on the gas wholesale market and "persistently low margins in the electricity generating business all had an adverse effect on business performance," the group complained.

The eurozone is at war with double-entry bookkeeping.

In the argument about the risks of the 3y LTROs the Bundesbank appears divided and isolated

Ahead of tomorrow's Governing council meeting, the Bundesbank appears to be weakened by division and isolation, Financial Times Deutschland and Handelsblatt report. FTD writes that the leaked letter had provoked internal tensions in the central bank. Pragmatists had argued that it should focus on a strategy to get out of the ultra-generous liquidity measures. The hard liners on the other hand had insisted that the letter should contains proposals about additional collateral from the euro crisis countries to the ECB in order to cover the risks emerging from the ever increasing Target balances in the central banks of surplus countries such as the Bundesbank. The Bundesbank's claim that the leak was not done with Weidmann's knowledge or approval is not reassuring to the ECB and other euro central banks. The reason is that it implies that Weidmann is not in control of his institution and that there are powerful forces inside the Bundesbank working against him. In its main front page story, Handelsblatt points out the Weidmann's isolation within the ECB's governing council. According to the paper the Bundesbank president's insistence on risks has brought him to a similar degree of isolation from his colleagues as his predecessor Axel Weber was in before he resigned.