(Reuters) - Germany and France warned Greece on Monday it will get no more bailout funds until it agrees with creditor banks on a bond swap and pressed for an early deal to avert a potential default in the euro zone's most debt-stricken nation. Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy, the euro zone's two leading powers, insisted after talks in Berlin that private sector bondholders must share in reducing Greece's debt burden, along with new European and IMF lending.

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(Reuters) - Welcome to an unlikely beacon of hope for the global auto industry -- Detroit. Executives arriving this week for the Detroit auto show find a U.S. car market that has morphed from meltdown three years ago to a safe haven as concerns grow about the stability of other big economies, from Europe to China.

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(Reuters) - Swiss National Bank Chairman Philipp Hildebrand resigned with immediate effect on Monday, saying he could not prove he had been unaware of a currency trade made by his wife and wanted to protect the integrity of the central bank. Hildebrand's decision to relinquish one of the world's top 10 central banking jobs after just two years came as Swiss parliamentarians met to discuss the scandal, which erupted last week after Sarasin bank sacked an employee who leaked details of the trade to a political opponent of the central banker.

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(Reuters) - Blue-chip names like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), Pfizer (PFE.N) and Peugeot (PEUP.PA) are among firms bailing out Europe's ailing banks in a reversal of the established roles of clients and lenders. One source with knowledge of the so-called repo deals or short-term secured lending, said the two U.S. pharmaceutical groups and French carmaker were the latest to sign up for them.

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(Reuters) - U.S. stocks cut losses and the Nasdaq turned positive on Friday after a strong jobs report and strength in large-cap Internet stocks. The U.S. economy added 200,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department reported, topping forecasts, and the jobless rate fell to 8.5 percent, a near three-year low. The data added to strong employment reports on Thursday.

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(Reuters) - Employment growth accelerated last month and the jobless rate dropped to a near three-year low of 8.5 percent, offering the strongest evidence yet the economic recovery was gaining steam. Nonfarm payrolls increased 200,000 in December, the Labor Department said on Friday. It was the biggest rise in three months and way above economists' expectations for a 150,000 gain.

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(Reuters) - CME Group Inc is under investigation for its handling of MF Global before the broker's collapse last October, the New York Times said. The probe by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, reportedly focuses on whether CME did enough to safeguard client assets at the giant futures broker. Regulators are still seeking hundreds of millions of dollars of customer funds gone missing since MF Global's failure.

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(Reuters) - Best Buy Co (BBY.N) appeared to gain market share from rivals in the United States during the key holiday season and stood by its profit outlook for the financial year despite a 1.2 percent same-store sales decline in December. The news boosted Best Buy shares nearly 3 percent and also allayed some concerns that all its holiday sales were driven by profit-sapping discounts.

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(Reuters) - France would not necessarily suffer financially if its credit rating was lowered from the current top-notch AAA grade, as U.S. experience shows, representatives of rating agency Standard & Poor's said in an interview published on Friday. S&P announced on December 5 that it was reviewing the ratings of France and other euro zone countries for possible downgrade and singled out France as the sole AAA-rated country that might be dropped two notches as opposed to just one.

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(Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell slightly on European debt worries on Thursday, but technology and financial shares rose on data pointing to a strengthening U.S. economy. Financial shares were the day's top gainers in volatile trading on Wall Street. At the same time, Europe's bank stocks fell on worries over their ability to raise capital amid a sovereign debt crisis.

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