Sale of a majority stake in Grant Thornton, which has $2.4 billion in annual US revenue, to New Mountain represents the biggest private-equity deal in the sector
ed nusbaum. a disappointing picture here. clearly. the european business leaders are depressed about the future of their businesses and the economy overall. what about the prospects of if you like a meltdown, the worst case scenario? that seems to be quite real if the numbers are to be believed. business leaders have the lowest confidence level since the peak of the financial crisis in 2009. on the other hand, they see solutions out there if politicians are willing to take the tough actions necessary to fik the euro crisis. we could see this flipflop from being negative or at least finally balanced to being positive if that crisis were resolved. absolutely. we re sitting on a nice edge. there s a perfect balance here and if the politicians are willing to take the tough actions, fix the euro crisis, the euro zone issues, then bases can rebound. let have a look at the you state. clearly, the world s largest economy is extremely important in the global picture. he we may be loo
you ll see a vastly different picture. healthy over a day. this is it over the year. it s trending down pretty much all of 2011. down by as you see now 22.5%. actually finished down by about 25%. that made it one of the worst performing indices of 2011. individual foreign investors will be able to buy indian stocks but only starting january 15th. we ll follow that story when it does happen, charles. looking at the comments. a lot of analysts are saying don t expect too much because it s been such an appalling year last year. it s going to be no urgency for foreign investors to get into this market any ways. interesting listening to ed nusbaum. they re confident, nor pessimistic. very much on a balance. as you mentioned, andrew and
the government of south sue dan gained control of a remote village that was attacked over the weekend. some 4,000 army and police reinforcements have reportedly been sent to aville raj. they re fighting over grazing land. the u.s. republican party presidential race is about to get ready over iowa. candidates have been campaigning for weeks and tuesday night voters will take part in what is being called caucuses. they are a few hundred in formal get-togethers where people take the candidate they want to face president barack obama in november s general election. those are the top stories from cnn, the world s news leader. much more coming up on the iowa caucuses just ahead. world business today starts right now. good morning from cnn london. i m charles hodson. a very good afternoon from cnn hong kong, i m andrew stevens and welcome to the first edition of world business today of 2012. this is tuesday, january 3rd. it is a new year. but one report already suggests busine