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VIENNA/FRANKFURT, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Property and retail giant Signa declared insolvency on Wednesday after last-ditch attempts to secure fresh funding failed, making it the biggest casualty so far of Europe's property crash.Controlled by Austrian magnate Rene Benko, the group is an owner of New York's Chrysler Building as well as several high-profile projects and department stores across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.The multi-billion-euro group, whose tentacles reach from Germany's best-known department store, Berlin's KaDeWe, to the country's top high-street chain Galeria and a skyscraper project, is set to send ripples...

Nov 27 (Reuters) - Earlier this fall, Morgan Stanley (MS.N) bought $300 million worth of protection against losses on some of its loans from Blackstone Group (BX.N) and other investors, two sources familiar with the matter said.The transaction, details of which have not been previously reported, was effectively insurance, structured as a sale of bonds called credit-linked notes, according to the sources and regulatory filings.By transferring the risk to investors, the $1.4 trillion asset bank could reduce the amount of capital it has to hold against those loans to cover...

Four thousand U.S. dollars are counted out by a banker counting currency at a bank in Westminster, Colorado November 3, 2009. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo Acquire Licensing RightsNEW YORK, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs (GS.N) expects the U.S. Treasuries curve to steepen in the long term, driven by rising fiscal spending, top executives said."Fiscal spending has not abated. It's strange for us to be spending this much" when employment is high, Ashok Varadhan, Goldman's co-head of global banking and markets, said on a company podcast."It doesn't feel like we're going...

Four thousand U.S. dollars are counted out by a banker counting currency at a bank in Westminster, Colorado November 3, 2009. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo Acquire Licensing RightsNEW YORK, Nov 21 (Reuters) - As U.S. regulators ready rules that would push more trading in Treasuries to a central clearing venue, the industry's focus is turning on a key question: how much collateral should hedge funds and others put up to trade there.At issue is whether imposing minimum requirements for collateral, called margin or haircuts, would raise trading costs and curb market...