| 751 | Arab Caliphate | Islamic craftsmen in the Middle East learn the secret of paper manufacture from Chinese captured during the Muslim conquest of Samarkand. The Arab paper industry rapidly develops. |
| 1618 | Spanish Netherlands | The first pawn shop is set up, in Brussels, in the Spanish Netherlands. |
| 23 March 1833 | Prussia, Austrian Empire | Prussia establishes a Zollverein (customs union) in Germany, incorporating Bavaria, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Württemberg, from which Austria is excluded. |
| 1846 | USA | Alexander Turney Stewart opens the Marble Dry Goods Palace on Broadway in New York City. It is the first department store and the largest shop in the world. |
| 27 June 1967 | UK | Barclays Bank opens the world's first automatic cash machine at Enfield in London, England. |
| 13 March 1979 | Europe | The European Monetary System (EMS) becomes operational. |
| 1982 | Mexico | Mexico defaults on a loan payment, leading to general concern about the ability of countries in the developing world to meet their international debts, and about the consequences of defaults for lending nations. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) intervenes with debt rescheduling and imposes austerity measures on debtor countries. |
| 1995 | UK | There are 777 supermarkets in Britain, compared to 524 in 1976, and only 31,382 small independent shops, compared to 51,494 in 1976.Supermarkets have 65% of the grocery trade. |
| 27 December 2000 | | The merger of pharmaceutical giants Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham is completed, creating the world's largest drugs company, GlaxoSmithKline. |
| 28 June 2001 | USA | Finding in favour of software giant Microsoft, a US appeals court overturns an earlier court decision that the group should be broken up into separate companies. However, the court agrees that Microsoft has illegally maintained its computer operating system monopoly. |
| 7 October 2001 | UK | At the UK government's instigation Railtrack, the owner and operator of Britain's railway network, is declared bankrupt and put into administration. |
| 25 October 2001 | | Microsoft, the world's largest software company, launches Windows XP, a new version of its dominant computer operating system. |
| November 2001 | | US oil companies Phillips Petroleum and Conoco announce a US$15 billion merger, creating the world's sixth-largest private oil firm. |
| 27 June 2002 | UK | Six years after privatization by the Conservative Party, ownership and management of the UK's railway network is transferred from Railtrack plc, which was put into administration in October 2001, to a not-for-profit public interest company, Network Rail, by the UK government. Network Rail will pay £500 million – of which £300 million will be provided by the government – as well as taking over Railtrack's debt. |
| 24 October 2003 | | British Airways' fleet of supersonic Concorde jets retires from commercial service after nearly 28 years. The occasion is marked by a triple landing at London's Heathrow airport. |
| 14 January 2004 | USA | New York-based bank J P Morgan Chase announces a takeover worth nearly US$60 billion of Chicago-based rival Bank One. The combined company will become the second-largest banking operation in the USA after Citigroup. |
| 18–19 August 2004 | | Google, the world's largest Internet web search engine, makes its stock market debut after its initial public offering (IPO) is approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. However, it cuts the price range for its IPO and the number of shares for sale, valuing the company at about US$23 billion rather than the US$35 billion previously anticipated. |
| 28 February 2005 | | Banking group HSBC records profits of £9.6 billion for 2004, a 37% increase on the previous year and the largest annual profit so far recorded by a British company. |
| 7–8 April 2005 | UK | The loss-making MG Rover group, the last independent British volume car maker, suspends production at its Longbridge plant in Birmingham, England, and goes into administration following the failure to secure a joint venture deal with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, China's largest manufacturer. |
| 12 April 2005 | UK | The supermarket group Tesco, with a 30% share of the British grocery market, becomes the first UK retail store chain to announce annual profits of more than £2 billion. |
| 30 May 2006 | UK | British mobile phone company Vodafone announces an annual loss of £22 billion, the largest in European corporate history. |
| 18 October 2006 | USA | The Dow Jones Industrial Average index, measuring the average share price and percentage change of 30 major US industrial companies, breaks briefly through the 12,000-point mark for the first time in its 110-year history. |
| 24 April 2007 | | In Europe's biggest private equity deal to date, the UK's Alliance Boots pharmaceutical retail chain is bought by its deputy executive chairman Stefano Pessina, backed by the US investors Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, for just over £11 billion. |
| 17 September 2007 | | A €500 million fine imposed by the European Commission in 2004 on the giant computer software company Microsoft for alleged anti-competitive practices is upheld in a ruling by the European Union's Court of First Instance. |
| 8 October 2007 | | In the world's largest banking takeover, a consortium of European banks led by the Royal Bank of Scotland completes the €71 billion acquisition of Dutch bank ABN Amro. |
