Week in pictures

Steelmaker Corus announced cuts of 2,500 UK jobs at Llanwern, Scunthorpe, Port Talbot (pictured), Rotherham and Teesside Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty

UK job losses continued to mount with announcements of redundancies at Serious Food, maker of Sunjuice, and maternity chain Blooming Marvellous and energy supplier E.ON Photograph: Gareth Llewellyn/PA

Europe's biggest electronics consumer group, Philips, headed by Gerard Kleisterlee, reported 6,000 job cuts, while Dutch bank ING got rid of its chief executive and 7,000 other jobs. It was bailed out last year with €10bn (£9.4bn) of state money but has reported its first loss Photograph: Michel Porro/Getty

And London Underground announced plans to axe 1,000 jobs this year as part of a drive to slash costs by £2.4bn Photograph: Kieran Doherty/Reuters

Amid tight security, the World Economic Forum 2009 got under way with politicians turning up in force to try to come up with urgent solutions to the global recession Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/Getty

At the World Economic Forum, FSA chairman Lord Adair Turner addressed bank pay; and Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin warned against protectionism Photograph: Michel Euler/PA

Opec secretary-general Abdalla Salem El Badri said in Davos that oil output levels could be cut further Photograph: Virginia Mayo/AP

Meanwhile, Shell posted its biggest drop in quarterly profits in a decade, yet still made the biggest UK annual profit in history Photograph: Graham Turner/Guardian

Barclays Group chief executive John Varley reiterated that the bank would make a profit of more than £5.3bn for 2008 and current trading was healthy Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP

It was revealed that directors of the state-backed Lloyds Banking group were sounding out shareholders about a change in its executive remuneration plans Photograph: Sang Tan/AP

Lord Mandelson unlocked £2.3bn in loan guarantees for the ailing car industry, including £1.3bn in loans from the European Investment Bank. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty

Alistair Darling's pre-budget report –was criticised by the Institute for Fiscal Studies for not doing enough to help get the public finances back on an even keel Photograph: STR/EPA

The government appointed Donald Brydon to take over from Allan Leighton as chairman of Royal Mail Photograph: Charlie Fawell/PA

One of Germany's richest and most powerful businesswomen, Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler, asked the German government to bail out her car components firm Photograph: Daniel Karmann/EPA