Morning business round-up: Shares continue to fall

What made the business news in Asia and Europe this morning? Here's our daily business round-up:

After rising in early trade, European shares continued to fall, adding to the sharp drops seen on Thursday.

The main indexes in the UK, France and Germany were all 1-2% lower in late morning trade, after having fallen by about 5% in the previous session.

Earlier, Asian shares had fallen sharply, with South Korea's main Kospi index slumping 5.7% and Australia's ASX losing 1.6%. Japan's Nikkei index was closed for a public holiday.

Thursday's slump was sparked by a Federal Reserve warning on Wednesday about the outlook for the US economy.

The G20 has tried to reassure markets by declaring it is ready to take action to stabilise the markets, and said it would follow up this pledge with a "bold action plan" at the beginning of November.

There was more gloomy news for Greece on Friday after credit ratings agency Moody's downgraded eight Greek banks by two notches.

The downgrade was a result of the banks' exposure to Greek government debt and the worsening economic problems in the country.

The ripples that have a spread around the global financial system in recent weeks led to action taken by the Bank of Korea, which became the latest central bank to step into the money markets in an attempt to stabilise its currency.

The Korean won has declined by 10% against the US dollar in the past month, and the bank said it was taking appropriate steps to stem the falls.

The move follows a similar move by the Indonesian central bank on Thursday to try to shore up the rupiah.

The latest edition of Business Daily from the BBC World Service considers whether the recent turmoil on the global financial markets is just one of capitalism's periodic crises or something more.