In short

The rest of the day's business news in brief

Anglo Irish Bank postpones agm

• Anglo Irish Bank has postponed its annual meeting to Wednesday, February 25th, from Friday, January 30th, and will publish its annual report on Tuesday, January 27th.

Anglo said the board of the bank "considers it appropriate" that the accounts, which are normally issued by the end of the calendar year, include details of the State's proposed €1.5 billion recapitalisation of the bank.

The recapitalisation proposal will be considered at an extraordinary meeting of the bank on Friday, January 16th.

The Government has committed to inject further capital into Anglo if required.

The bank said in a statement to the stock exchange that its core tier-one capital ratio - a key measure of a bank's capacity to absorb unforeseen losses - would rise to 7.7 per cent.

UK's Nationwide to operate in Republic

The largest building society in the UK, Nationwide Building Society, has been approved by the Financial Regulator to operate as a credit institution in the Republic in a move that will allow it to access European Central Bank (ECB) funding.

The building society, which received the approval from the regulator on Monday, plans to start accepting deposits in Ireland from March.

A Nationwide spokesman said accessing funding from the ECB's liquidity system was "something we will be considering".

Inflation tumbles in euro zone

• Euro-zone inflation has tumbled to its lowest level in more than two years on the back of crumbling economic activity, extending the steep sell-off in the euro that has emerged since the start of the year.

Annual inflation in the 16-country region fell to 1.6 per cent in December from 2.1 per cent a month earlier, according to an initial estimate by Eurostat, the EU's statistical office. That was the same as in October 2006 but otherwise the lowest since November 1999.

With further falls in inflation expected in coming months, the figures added to the pressure on the European Central Bank to cut interest rates again.

Yesterday the euro dropped 1.7 per cent to a three-week low against both the dollar and the pound. - (Financial Times service)

Oil prices rise above $50 on Opec cuts

Oil prices rose above $50 a barrel yesterday amid a growing belief that Opec is succeeding in delivering cuts in production.

Oil traders have been largely sceptical about the cartel carrying out the three output cuts totalling 4.2 million barrels a day it has announced since September. But preliminary evidence of lower supplies has now pushed prices higher.

The clearest signal of Opec's success in cutting production came yesterday in a record narrowing of the price spread between lower-quality crude - the bulk of the cartel's output - such as Dubai oil, and higher- quality oil, such as the benchmark Brent oil. The so-called Brent/Dubai exchange of futures for swaps traded in Singapore at parity for the first time since the instrument was launched 10 years ago, down from a premium of 40 cents the previous day. It traded as high as $5 a barrel before Opec started to cut its production last September. - (Financial Times service)