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Fitch Ratings has revised the Outlook on the Republic of Lithuania's Long-term foreign currency and local currency Issuer Default ratings (IDRs) to Negative from Stable. At the same time, the agency has affirmed Lithuania's Long-term foreign currency IDR at 'A', Long-term local currency IDR at 'A+', Short-term foreign currency IDR at 'F1' and Country Ceiling at 'AA'.

The open-end mutual fund, long the dominant investment product of choice by financial advisors, will suffer declines in its portion of the product mix by more than 10 percent by 2009, according to the Advisor Product Forecast™, a new study by Cogent Research. The Advisor Product Forecast is built upon a detailed channel-by-channel survey of advisors, providing data beginning with where advisors are currently directing assets under management and where they expect to be two years from now, along with a product map showing where they intend to allocate new money.

CME Group, the world's largest and most diverse exchange, announced November volume averaged 13.0 million contracts per day, up 41 percent from November 2006, and second only to August in terms of highest monthly average daily volume during 2007.

JupiterResearch has found that although high-speed wireless data networks are available to the majority of all cell phone users, few are migrating “desktop” activities to cell phones.

UEAPME, the European craft and SME employers' organisation, warmly welcomed the political agreement on the so-called "VAT package" reached by the ECOFIN Council in Brussels. UEAPME was pleased by the Council's support to the creation of a "one-stop-shop" scheme to simplify registration and declaration of VAT by businesses in their home country, which will also apply to activities carried out in other Member States. This will dramatically diminish bureaucracy, according to UEAPME, which was equally satisfied with the Council's choice to move taxation for VAT on services to the place where the customer is situated from the place where the supplier is located as is currently the case.

The Conference Board reports that the leading index for Japan decreased 0.2 percent, while the coincident index increased 0.5 percent in October.

Global Insight, the world's leading company for economic and financial analysis and forecasting, released the third quarter 2007 update of House Prices in America, the U.S. housing-valuation analysis, showing that prices for single-family homes declined for the first time since 1994, with California, Florida and Michigan accounting for the steepest losses. Prices fell at a 1% annualized rate during the quarter, though they were still up 1.8% year-over-year.

At seven, the number of November IPOs was slightly below average for this month. By market, there were three IPOs on JASDAQ, one on JASDAQ/NEO, one on OSE Hercules, one on the Nagoya 2nd section, and one on Nagoya Centrex.

Between 2000 and 2006, EU27 exports of goods to Africa rose from 66 billion euro to 92 bn, while imports increased from 85 bn to 126 bn. The EU27 deficit in trade with Africa rose from 19 bn in 2000 to 35 bn in 2006, corresponding to 18% of the total EU27 external trade deficit. Africa accounted for around 9% of the EU27's total external trade in goods in 2006.

Fixed mortgage rates fell to the lowest level since Sept. 2005, with the average conforming 30-year fixed mortgage rate now 6 percent. According to Bankrate.com's weekly national survey of large lenders, the average 30-year fixed mortgage has an average of 0.35 discount and origination points.