(Reuters) - The euro slipped and world stocks were stuck on Monday with fears of a Greek debt default undimmed and U.S. and UK market holidays keeping many investors on the sidelines. The shared currency was down 0.4 percent and European shares were flat in anemic trade, although German utilities sagged after Berlin's decision to shut all nuclear reactors by 2022 in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster.

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(Reuters) - The European Union is working on a second bailout package for Greece in a race to release vital loans next month and avert the risk of the euro zone country defaulting, EU officials said on Monday. Greece's conservative opposition meanwhile demanded lower taxes as a condition for reaching a political consensus with the Socialist government on further austerity measures, which Brussels says is needed to secure any further assistance.

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(Reuters) - Ratings agency Standard and Poor's cut its credit rating on Tokyo Electric Power (9501.T) to junk status on Monday, saying the utility's lenders were more likely to be forced to write off debt as part of a plan to compensate victims of an ongoing nuclear crisis. S&P said it had lowered the long-term credit rating of Tokyo Electric, one of the most active bond issuers in Japan, to B+ from BBB, while cutting the rating on the utility's secured bonds to BB+ from BBB.

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(Reuters) - G8 leaders all back French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde's bid to run the IMF, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Sunday, as the candidate attacked a call to investigate her role in a 2008 legal case that may harm her chances. France was careful not to speak out about Lagarde's candidacy during a Group of Eight summit in Deauville last week but Juppe said all eight nations were firmly behind Lagarde.

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(Reuters) - Ireland's government moved on Monday to quash speculation it would be forced to seek a second EU-IMF bailout and said it would make a tentative return to international debt markets in the final quarter of next year. Dublin is trying to distance itself from the woes of euro zone struggler Greece, which is trying to avoid a potentially devastating default and seems certain to require a second bailout to plug a looming funding gap.

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(Reuters) - Honda Motor (7267.T) said on Monday it has decided to suspend share buybacks temporarily to preserve funds after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The automaker has said it is aiming for an annual shareholder return of about 30 percent, and its planned dividend of 54 yen per share and share buybacks done last year would bring the return to a little over 20 percent for the year ended in March.

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(Reuters) - The idea that a Greek debt restructuring could be carried out in an orderly way is a "fairytale," European Central Bank board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said in an interview published on Monday. "If you look at financial markets, every time there is mention of a word like 'restructuring' or 'soft restructuring' they go crazy -- which proves that this could not happen in an orderly way, in this environment at least," Bini Smaghi told the Financial Times.

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Reuters) - Australia's government urged companies on Monday to tighten vigilance over cyber attacks launched offshore against some of the world's biggest resource firms and other businesses, warning high-tech threats were intensifying. Lockheed Martin Corp, the U.S. government's top information technology provider, raised concern about cyber hacking at the weekend, complaining of a pattern of frequent attacks on it from around the world.

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(Reuters) - China has raised power prices for industrial, commercial and agricultural users in some regions by about 3 percent in an attempt to ease what threatens to be the worse power shortage in seven years in the world's second-largest economy. The power price rise, which excludes residential users, will add to inflationary pressures but revive profit margins at power producers. That should prompt an increase in electricity supplies from loss-making power plants that had failed to keep up with rising demand. Higher prices should also discourage excess power consumption.

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(Reuters) - UBS (UBS.N) (UBSN.VX) has seen "dire" client activity in recent weeks, Juerg Zeltner, the bank's wealth management head, was quoted as saying in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Monday. "It's no secret markets have not been cooperative this past few weeks -- as a bank, we're totally exposed to these swings. The (strong) Swiss franc is also taking its toll," Zeltner said in the interview.

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