The Chancellor also pledged UK action on tax evasion and avoidance

Tension builds over Japan's efforts to drive down yen, but ministers resist crackdown

Global finance ministers braced for more skirmishes today in a week of simmering tension over “currency wars” as the G20 gathered in Moscow.

The G7 nations’ finance chiefs and central bankers today pledged not to trigger a damaging currency war with deliberate actions to drive exchange rates down.

Economic View: How well we in Britain do will largely be determined by what happens to the rest of the world

A coalition of bosses from Britain's biggest companies, including Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer and Lloyds Banking Group, have called on industry to better engage their workers.

Economic View

Outlook If you read Confidence Men by Ron Suskind you may experience a surge of patriotic pride. The book is an insider's account of Wall Street's collapse and of how an inexperienced President gets gamed by the system. Old-time political players act to dilute Obama's impact and to stymie his reforms.

That's one of the toughest jobs going – is he a wizened veteran?

Not exactly, Mr Azumi is just 49, which makes him a babe-in-arms by Japanese political standards. He's never held a financial or economic brief before, or even pronounced publicly on such matters.

Financial officials from the Group of Seven industrialised nations will discuss how to coordinate action between their countries' central banks, a source said today.

The service sector booked its fastest pace of growth in more than a year last month, although the uncertain outlook for the economy was underlined by a separate report today suggesting the jobs market is stalling.

The decision by G7 finance ministers to make a rare co-ordinated intervention in the foreign exchange markets paid off yesterday, as the value of crisis-hit Japan's currency fell and tensions on stock exchanges around the world eased.

At the worst possible moment for Japan's economy, the yen has surged to all-time highs against the US dollar and other currencies, making life for its hard-pressed exporters, already battling with disruptions to supply chains and power, even more difficult.