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Most followed: China crisis, Greek drama, Black Friday, board room upheaval

Published: 11:19 06 Jul 2015 BST

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While Europe struggles with a little local difficulty following yesterday’s Greek referendum vote, Chinese stock markets have been showing Europe how to do volatility.

A weekend of emergency meetings saw the arms of several brokerages forced as far up their backs as they would go, with the authorities calling on them to contribute to a stabilisation fund and pledge not to sell any shares until the Shanghai Composite index had recovered 4,500 points.

This made shares something of a one way bet, and the Composite index finished up 2.4% today, having been up more than 8% at one point.

According to Bloomberg, “Chinese financiers are turning to the same playbook used by their American counterparts to fight a crash that’s wiping out stock-market fortunes on an unprecedented scale”.

The emergency action by US financiers in 1929 worked … for a day or two. We’ll see if China’s strong-arm tactics working any better some 86 years later.

It is unlikely to have escaped your notice that predictions from some quarters (such as this one) that the Greek referendum vote would be a close run thing turned out to be even less accurate than predictions about the UK General Election outcome.

Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has promised to return to the negotiating table to argue for gentler terms from the country’s creditors; meanwhile, Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has been made to feel about as welcome as a bluebottle fly in a restaurant by the other European finance ministers and so has excused himself from meetings held by the European Union’s grey-suited number jugglers.

“I shall wear the creditors' loathing with pride," he is reported to have said, though from the broadcast of his speech it appeared he was actually wearing a teal coloured T-shirt and, possibly (the cameras did not pan down that far) a pair of beige shorts and some flip-flops.

The vote to reject the creditors’ bailout terms has sent European stock markets lower, but not by the sort of margin that would cause a sleepless night in Beijing, though the common currency has taken a shoeing (but not a flip-flopping) on the foreign exchange markets.

The term “Black Friday” is trending on the Business news section of a well-known search engine, but this is not, surprisingly, a reference to stock market crashes we have known and loathed, but some sort of contrived US shopping event.

Online shopping giant Amazon is celebrating its 20th anniversary, not, as some might have hoped, by reviewing its corporate tax policies, but by holding a promotional shopping event.

In the small caps world, gas-to-liquids firm Velocys (LON:VLS) has suspended its chief executive officer, Roy Lipski, while it investigates allegations of serious misconduct.

The company said the allegations do not involve any element of fraud or financial impropriety, and stressed that the suspension of Lipski does not imply it believes he is guilty of misconduct.

The share price has taken a whacking, but not as much the shares of product developer LiteBulb (LON:LBB), which have dimmed considerably after it announced the results of a strategic review.

Chief executive Simon McGivern and sales director James Phillips are heading for the exit, while Guy Pettigrew (chief financial officer) and Leigh Webb (chief operating officer) have joined the board.

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