Alliance Trust has upped its dividend by 7% and posted a turnaround in performance in its annual results, with the trust leaping to top quartile in its sector.

Carlos Slim, the telecoms tycoon, has trumped Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in the first ever daily rich list index from Bloomberg.

Ivan Glasenberg, the chief executive of recently-floated Glencore, has defended the $165m dividend payout he pocketed last year.

The €1trn in cheap loans provided by the ECB since December is expected to be only the start of a wave of liquidity measures that store up problems for the eurozone.

Alliance Trust chief executive Katherine Garrett-Cox has admitted the company needs to drive up demand for its shares in order to reduce its discount.

UK dividend growth will disappoint in 2012, undershooting forecasts, investment trust manager Charles Luke has warned.

Marlborough's Giles Hargreave has reversed his notoriously bearish stance on equity markets for the first time since 2008, telling investors now is the time to be fully invested.

HOW INVESTORS LOST FAITH

Standard Life Investments' Harry Nimmo has stepped down from running the Scottish Widows HIFML UK Smaller Companies Alpha fund as the group moves the management in-house.

European banks have borrowed €529bn from the European Central Bank in the second tranche of its three-year long-term refinancing operation (LTRO), asking for more support than forecast.