The complex plan calls for the government to back about $306 billion in loans and securities and directly invest about $20 billion in the company. The plan, emerging after a harrowing week in the financial markets, is the government’s third effort in three months.

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Investors sold off corporate bonds with lower credit ratings, concerned that a rash of retailers, manufacturers and other companies will close their doors and default on their debt in the coming months. Businesses around the world cut prices at a record rate and builders started fewer new homes last month than anytime on record.

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Democrat Barack Obama has secured enough electoral votes to be elected the first African-American president of the United States, capping a meteoric rise for the freshman Illinois Senator whose message of change resonated with a remarkably broad cross-section of voters across the country.

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A CBS/New York Times poll puts Obama's lead at 52%-39% among likely voters. Perhaps more intriguing than the 13-point headline lead, though, is Obama's strength among several groups that voted for George Bush in 2004. A Democrat hasn't won the white male vote since 1972.

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The figures are likely to boost expectations that the Bank of England will cut interest rates by another 50 basis points next month as the economy looks like heading into its first recession since the early 1990s. So the UK will be classed as being in recession if the economy slows in the fourth quarter as well.

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The index later fell even lower, closing down 1,089.02 points, or 11.4 percent, to 8,458.45, the biggest one-day percentage drop since the market crash of October 1987. “Europe showed the capacity to respond to a crisis more quickly than the U.S.,”

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The Dow Jones index in New York sank nearly 8% and shares in Brazil by 10%. There were sharp falls in London and on other European markets. The FTSE 100 index of leading shares closed 7% down. Shares across the world have fallen sharply amid fears of recession.

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Treasury Chief Says Banks Must Deploy New Capital, President George W Bush said the move would help to return stability to the US banking sector and ultimately help preserve free markets. US federal authorities will also temporarily insure most new debt issued by US banks.

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"Intensifying solvency concerns about a number of the largest U.S.-based and European financial institutions have pushed the global financial system to the brink of systemic meltdown," IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.

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Finance ministers from richest industrialised nations have pledged action to tackle the financial crisis. The G7 nations issued a five-point plan of "decisive action" to unfreeze credit markets, after a meeting in Washington.

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