(Reuters) - Halliburton Co (HAL.N), the world's second-largest oilfield services company, reported a forecast-topping 54 percent jump in profit on Monday as a U.S. onshore drilling boom showed no sign of cooling off. High oil prices have led oil and gas producers to plunge billions of dollars into developing fields such as the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, creating a tighter market for equipment that allowed Halliburton to push through price rises.

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(Reuters) - The world economy should expand steadily this year and next thanks mainly to prospering emerging powers, a Reuters poll showed, but fiscal troubles lurking in Europe and potentially the United States risk blowing this view apart. The quarterly survey of more than 350 economists from all over the world showed a dimmer outlook for most of the rich-world Group of Seven economies since the last survey in April.

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(Reuters) - Pressure on Europe's banks to raise more capital increased on Monday after last week's stress tests revealed their holdings of European sovereign debt, with likely losses on Greek bonds a growing concern. A health check of 90 European banks unveiled late on Friday was slammed as being too soft, but provided more than 900 pages of data to allow investors and analysts to run a harsher test.

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(Reuters) - Wall Street gave up much of its early gains on Friday as signs of weakness in the U.S. economy and concern over European bank stress tests outweighed strong earnings from Google and Citigroup. A report showing U.S. consumer sentiment slipped in July to its lowest level since March 2009, a weak reading from the manufacturing sector in New York state, and anticipation of the bank stress tests results due later on Friday weighed on sentiment.

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(Reuters) - Consumer confidence plummeted to its lowest level in more than two years in early July and factory output stalled in June, further diminishing hopes of a quick economic rebound in the second half of the year. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's index of consumer sentiment slipped to 63.8 in July, the lowest since March 2009, as households worried about declining wages and rising unemployment, data showed on Friday, from 71.5 in June. Economists had expected the index to climb to 72.5.

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(Reuters) - Citigroup Inc's second-quarter profit jumped 24 percent as the bank lost less money than expected on bad U.S. loans. The third-largest U.S. bank made more loans during the quarter than in the first three months of the year, which could signal future income gains if loan growth continues. The bank's shares were fractionally higher in morning trading.

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(Reuters) - Rebekah Brooks resigned as chief executive of News International on Friday, yielding to political and investor pressure over a phone hacking scandal that has shaken Rupert Murdoch's media empire on both sides of the Atlantic. The 43-year-old Brooks, a former editor of the scandal-hit News of the World and of flagship daily tabloid The Sun, was a close confidante of Murdoch, who described her as his first priority when he flew in to London this week to manage the crisis at News Corp's British newspaper unit.

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(Reuters) - A health check of European banks is expected to show that as many as 15 lenders need more capital to withstand a prolonged recession, with criticism growing that the tests do not encompass the impact of a Greek default. Europe's bank "stress test," to be published at 1600 GMT, will make 90 lenders reveal for the first time their profit forecasts, a breakdown of their sovereign bond holdings and funding costs, and will force the weakest to recapitalise.

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(Reuters) - Swiss bank Credit Suisse is being probed by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of a broader investigation into banks suspected of helping Americans evade taxes. Credit Suisse said on Friday it had received a letter saying it was a target of a DoJ investigation concerning "historical private banking services provided on a cross-border basis to U.S. persons." In a major blow to banking secrecy that helped Switzerland build up a multi-trillion-dollar offshore banking industry, Credit Suisse's local rival UBS paid a $780 million fine in 2009 and agreed to hand over information about nearly 5,000 secret accounts held by U.S. citizens to settle U.S. charges it aided tax evasion.

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(Reuters) - Ratings agency Standard & Poor's has warned there is a one-in-two chance it could cut the United States' prized AAA credit rating if a deal on raising the government's debt ceiling is not agreed soon. Putting the U.S. on negative watch, S&P warned that it could cut the rating as soon as this month if talks between the White House and Republicans remain stalemated. Any cut would be by one or more notches, it added. The dollar fell on the news. U.S. Treasuries were largely steady.

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