Global equities suffered heavy falls as investor doubts grew over whether sweeping measures by central banks to tackle the credit crunch would be sufficient to defuse the crisis.

Wall Street stemmed its losses late on Thursday, but Asian and European shares were hit hard as analysts warned that the planned intervention looked modest compared with the scale of the problem – not least because there are signs that losses at big financial institutions are mounting. Asian and European stocks fell further on Friday and Wall Street was set to open lower.