Global business

UBS made public a summary of an internal investigation into the mistakes that led it to write down a total of $38 billion, the most by any European bank hit by the subprime crisis. The company laid most of the blame on positions taken by its investment-banking arm.

Other banks added to the list of woes stemming from the mortgage markets. Credit Suisse swung to a loss in the first quarter largely because it took $5.0 billion in write-downs. Bank of America said its first-quarter profit had fallen by 77 percent compared with a year ago, and that it would increase its provision for credit losses by $5 billion. Citigroup booked another $13 billion in write-downs and made a quarterly loss of $5.1 billion. And Royal Bank of Scotland said it needed to raise $24 billion, about a third of its market value, in a rights issue to help protect its core capital.

The Bank of England unveiled an initiative that will allow British banks over the next six months to swap high-quality mortgage-backed and other securities for Treasury bills for up to three years. The central bank estimated that around $100 billion of such assets would be swapped at first.

The Italian government offered a $500 million emergency loan to Alitalia, Italy's troubled national airline, after Air France-KLM pulled out of takeover talks. Silvio Berlusconi, who will become Italy's prime minister in May, promised that a group of Italian companies and banks would put together a new rescue plan for Alitalia.

Analysts renewed speculation about whether Société Générale would be subject to a takeover bid after the French bank said that Daniel Bouton would step down as chief executive. Bouton, who remains chairman, was roundly criticized for the rogue-trading scandal that embroiled SocGen in January. He would like the bank to remain independent.

Political economy In an effort to revive investor confidence, China reduced its stamp duty on share trading to 0.1 percent from 0.3 percent. The tax was increased in May 2007 to cool feverish stock markets. Since then, the government has made fighting inflation its top priority, causing some to worry that economic growth will slow. Investors responded positively: The day after the tax cut was announced, the market jumped 9.3 percent.

South Korea's corporate world was rocked by the announcement that Lee Kun-hee would resign as chairman of Samsung Group after his indictment for tax evasion. Lee, whose father founded Samsung in 1938, has run South Korea's biggest family-controlled industrial conglomerate since 1987. His is the biggest scalp in a nascent anti-corruption drive, which has frustrated campaigners because so few culprits have resigned.

Fernando Lugo, a former Catholic bishop and liberation theologian standing for a center-left coalition, was elected as Paraguay's president, ending the six-decade grip on power of the Colorado Party, the longest-ruling in the world. Lugo campaigned for land reform and against corruption. In victory he signaled his distance from Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez.

Georgia called an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, claiming that Russia had shot down one of its spy drones over Abkhazia. The incident followed a Russian decision to step up links with the breakaway region in order to put more pressure on the Georgians.