Global Watch

* The world's top steel producers blasted the Us for slapping hefty tariffs on steel imports, threatening to fight back through law suits and trade reprisals. The European Union and other producers including Japan, Russia, South Korea condemned the decision.

* Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said a US economic expansion was "well underway", making a rare and unexpected revision of formal testimony he had delivered to the Congress only last week.

* The Bank of England left its key lending rate at 4.0 per cent for a fourth month running despite signs that Europe's second-biggest economy is recovering. UK interest rates have been cut seven times last year in an effort to ward off the worst effects of a global slowdown.

* General Motors, the world's largest carmaker, admitted for the first time that it had about a million units of excess capacity in North America. The group aims to soak up surplus capacity through a combination of cost-cutting, improved plant utilisation and new model lines.

* HSBC Holdings may rethink is involvement in Argentina after its exposure there forced the bank to take a $1.12 bn charge. This contributed to an 18 per cent drop in 2001 pre-tax profits to $8 bn, HSBC said.

* US President George Bush is to unveil a sweeping plan to crack down on corporate executives who mislead their shareholders, hoping to shore up investor confidence after the collapse of Enron Corp, Bush's biggest financial backer in the 2000 campaign.

* BNP Paribas, France's largest bank, announced robust results for last year, with net operating income up 11.1 per cent compared with 2000 to $4.5 bn and net profit down only 2.6 per cent. The bank's "good performance in a bad environment for financial services" was attributed to strong controls on costs and risk.