Less than a day after taking office, Greece's new caretaker government was faced with yet another credit downgrade as Fitch that warned Athens of a "probable" exit from the eurozone if pro-bailout parties failed to win new elections due on 17 June.

President François Hollande showed an unexpectedly ruthless streak yesterday by shaping a gender-balanced French government from which several friends, and one notable foe, were excluded.

Greece has appointed a senior judge as prime minister of a caretaker government that will lead the country to repeat elections next month.

Differences between Mr Hollande and Ms Merkel are more of style than of substance

The HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver said he remained "sanguine" about the prospects of France after the election of its new President, François Hollande.

The HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver said he remained "sanguine" about the prospects of France being run by its new President, François Hollande.

Country's future in eurozone thrown into doubt as groups opposed to EU bailout make gains

He has admitted that he 'does not like the rich' and declared: 'my real enemy is the world of finance'

Greeks angered by a vicious and protracted financial crisis punished the parties that have dominated politics for decades Sunday, with projected election results showing them hemorrhaging support to anti-bailout groups and no party gaining enough ballots to form a government.

France's presidential election was a close-run affair, far closer than the polls had suggested through most of the long and often ill-tempered campaign. So, while François Hollande's victory gives France its first Socialist President for 16 years and makes Nicolas Sarkozy France's first one-term President for more than a generation, it represents something less than the historic turnaround Mr Hollande's supporters rushed to claim. France, like so many European countries, remains finely balanced between left and right. A crisis such as the one that it, and the Continent as a whole, faces, is not resolved by an election; in some ways, an election merely highlights the divisions.

1. Till Death Us Do Part

It is fashionable to lament the death of politics, and the lacklustre campaigns waged in many of our cities for yesterday's local elections did little to contradict that. Anyone looking for signs of political life in recent weeks, however, had only to look across the Channel to rediscover politics, red in tooth and claw.