Three more European governments offered blanket bank deposit guarantees before shell-shocked markets open today, as regulators from Washington to Seoul scrambled to contain the deepest financial crisis in 80 years.
For its part, the US Federal Reserve is pushing Citigroup Inc and rival Wells Fargo & Co to compromise over their competing bids for hobbled US bank Wachovia Corp that could result in them carving up its assets.
But the flurry of measures failed to reassure.
Stocks in Asia-Pacific outside Japan dropped more than 5 per cent today to their lowest in nearly three years, and shares were expected to open sharply lower in Europe, where contagion from the US subprime crisis has intensified financial
industry woes.
Germany pledged yesterday to guarantee private deposit accounts, as it clinched a deal to rescue mortgage lender Hypo Real Estate. That was followed by similar moves by Austria and Denmark, after Ireland issued the first such guarantee last week.
Adding to worries in Asia, South Korea said ahead of markets' opening today that its banks were having difficulty securing foreign-currency liquidity and pledged to use its $240 billion in official reserves to help them secure enough foreign cash.
"It's become far more of a global issue that now requires far more of a global solution," said Dwyfor Evans, strategist with State Street Global Markets in Hong Kong.
"Central banks are now being seen as the main providers of liquidity within these markets. And it's very bad for sentiment," he said.
Asian shares fell sharply on concerns about whether the $700 billion US rescue plan, approved by Congress last week, would be quickly implemented and be enough to shore up the economy.
Japan's Nikkei share average fell 4.8 per cent to its lowest since February 2004, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 3.4 per cent. South Korean stocks tumbled 4.1 per cent, and the won sank as much as 5 per cent.
South Korea's finance minister said the country would dip into the world's sixth-largest foreign exchange reserves to help with loans.
Other officials in Asia moved to reassure markets that they had enough cash.
Responding to legislators' questions about money supply in Taiwan's financial system, Perng Fai-nan, the island's central bank governor, said liquidity was "not a problem".
Asian markets' falls followed a hectic weekend during which leaders of Europe's four biggest economies - Germany, France, Britain and Italy - decided against a coordinated bank bailout, while vowing to stabilise markets.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi later said Italy would revive the idea of a common bank bailout fund at a meeting of finance ministers today, but Germany responded that it remained opposed to any such shared bank rescue fund.
European banks have been hit hard by the fallout from a crisis that began in the United States when the housing market collapsed and bad mortgage debts multiplied.
Reuters