MasterCard Inc. (MA) agreed to trim its cross-border transaction fees to resolve certain European regulatory issues, leading to a drop in its share price over investor concern that the company's revenue from merchant fees would be affected.

The world's second-largest credit card network said lowering the transaction fees will threaten investment in payments systems. The European Commission ruled in 2007 that MasterCard's cross-border transaction fees broke European Union antitrust rules. It fees on debit cards will now be cut to 0.2%, down from the 0.8% to 1.9% the company charged back in 2007.

Javier Perez, president of the company's European division said, "We do not believe this level of interchange is adequate to sustain strong competition in the European payments industry. That is why these rates are only interim, and why we are pursuing our appeal in the European Court of First Instance."

The Commission estimated MasterCard charges

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Gold surge fuelled by inflation fears… Deflation seen short-lived…  Platinum boosted, helped by auto sector optimism

Gold surged on Monday, helped by higher oil prices, a lower dollar and investor concern about inflationary pressures given the large amounts of money being pumped into the global economy.

Autocatalyst material platinum jumped more than 6 percent to $840 an ounce, while palladium gained more than 11 percent to $178 on growing optimism about a rescue for the auto industry in the United States.

Spot gold rose nearly 3 percent to $776.70 an ounce and was up at $773.90/775.90 at 1030 GMT from $754.60 in New York late on Friday, when it fell to $740.40, the lowest since November 20 in a commodities-wide sell-off.

To some, talk of inflation is premature given the world is currently grappling with the prospect of deflation, but forward looking investors are

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div style="text-align: justify;"Oppenheimer is out downgrading span style="font-weight: bold;"Cubist Pharma (NASDAQ:CBST)/span to Underperform from Mkt Perform, span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"seeing downside to $18-$19 range./spanbr /br /According to Oppenheimer the downgrade is based on concerns that the near-term product in-licensing is likely to be outside core markets and may result in material dilution. CBST has identified licensing a late-stage or commercial product as a high priority. Based on firm's review of acquisition candidates in CBST's core anti-infective market, they see few compelling opportunities and believe CBST may be forced to expand outside its core market. On valuation, CBST trades at 22.0x '09 fully taxed pro forma EPS compared to 16.1x for a universe of profitable biotechs. View the absence of composition of matter patents for Cubicin as a chronic high-impact risk factor justifying a lower PEG than peer group.br /br /Opco points to the acquisition of Ecallantide from ...

Russia's currency reserves, the third-biggest in the world, are falling steadily as tumbling oil prices and an exodus of capital are piling the pressure on the central bank and government policymakers to accept a devaluation in the ruble. Oil prices which are now down 60% from their july peak, slowing economic growth and increasing investor concern are steadily draining Russia's foreign exchange reserves, which fell 19 percent (to $484.6 billion) in the 12 weeks through Oct. 31. This is down from $598.1 billion in the week before the invasion of Southern Ossetia.Russia had been using the reserves to try and contain the upward movement in the ruble was thought to present a threat to the competitiveness of exports. But resistance is now becoming increasingly difficult in the fact of a 13 percent drop against the dollar since August 1.Bank Rossii began managing the ruble's exchange rate ...