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Investors awaited a flurry of corporate results on Thursday from companies such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Procter & Gamble, as well as the first estimate of the U.S. first-quarter GDP growth. Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a 2.0 percent annualized pace of growth compared with a 3.1 percent rate in the final fourth quarter estimate.

U.S. crude futures rose to their highest in 2-1/2 years and metal prices rallied as the Federal Reserve appeared in no rush to tighten its monetary policy.

The dollar sank to a three-year low against a basket of currencies on Thursday and was at risk of a drop to $1.50 versus the euro, with momentum-driven investors piling in anticipation U.S. interest rates will be low for a long time.

Japan's Nikkei added 1.6 percent while European stocks were up 0.2 percent in morning trade, gaining ground for the sixth straight session, boosted by a raft of strong earnings from firms such as Deutsche Bank and Royal Dutch Shell.

Consumer goods maker Unilever, however, warned of higher commodity costs for 2011 as vegetable oil and chemical prices rose sharply, and said it would cut its own costs deeper to compensate.

Starbucks Corp warned that rising fuel and dairy costs will take a bigger chunk out of earnings than previously anticipated, and offered a full-year forecast that disappointed Wall Street.

Bid target NYSE Euronext, the transatlantic exchange operator, stepped up calls on shareholders to back a $10.2 billion bid from Deutsche Boerse as it unveiled robust first-quarter results.

Japanese consumer electronics giant Panasonic Corp said it was planning 35,000 job cuts over three years to March 2013, nearly 10 percent of its workforce, in a bid to pare costs and keep up with Asian rivals.

The Nasdaq jumped to a 10-year high as U.S. stocks rallied on Wednesday after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's dovish comments.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 95.59 points, or 0.76 percent, to 12,690.96. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 8.42 points, or 0.62 percent, to 1,355.66. The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 22.34 points, or 0.78 percent, to 2,869.88.

(Reporting by Blaise Robinson; Editing by Hans Peters)

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) is also expected to maintain its ultra-loose monetary policy later in the day and indicate its readiness to ease further if damage from last month's earthquake proves bigger than expected.

Putting pressure on the BOJ to do more, latest data showed Japanese factory output fell at a record pace in March.

With the two major central banks keeping interest rates near zero, investors are set to continue using the dollar and yen as funding currencies to buy higher-yielding assets, commodities and equities.

"The reason for the dollar's broad weakness is that market players think it makes sense to use the dollar to fund investment in various assets, since U.S. interest rates are likely to stay low for a while," said Daisuke Karakama, market economist at Mizuho Corporate Bank in Tokyo.

Japan's Nikkei average .N225 rose 1.3 percent, while stocks elsewhere in Asia .MIAPJ0000PUS put on more than 1 percent to hit a new three-year peak.

Trading volume in Japan's stock markets, however, is expected to be thin as the Golden Week holidays loom and as investors awaited earnings from the likes of Panasonic Corp (6752.T) and Honda Motor 7267.t due after the market close.

"If earnings continue to impress the market, the Nikkei may rise further," said Makoto Kikuchi, chief executive officer at Myojo Asset Management.

Japanese markets will be shut on Friday and will reopen on Monday, ahead of more holidays next week.

Also highlighting hefty demand for higher-yielding assets and exposure to fast-growing emerging Asian markets, Indonesia's $2.5 billion medium-term note offering this week was nearly 3 times oversubscribed, with half the issue snapped up by U.S. investors.

The dollar index .DXY, which tracks its performance against a basket of major currencies, fell to as low as 72.878 -- a level not seen since July 2008.

Dealers also said several central banks in Asia were spotted buying the greenback to check sharp gains in their currencies.

The euro rose to a 16-month high of $1.4878, further spurred by stop-loss buying after a breach of option barriers around $1.4800, while the Australian dollar touched a post-float high of $1.0948.

In the commodities market, U.S. crude scaled a 2-1/2 year peak of $113.70 a barrel, and gold futures raced to a record high above $1,530 an ounce. Copper gained nearly 2 percent to around $9,490 a tonne.

U.S. Treasury yields were a touch lower, after having risen on Wednesday as the market made room for an upcoming seven-year supply. The two-year yield slipped 1.2 basis points to 0.6368 percent.

The committee said it may sue Sokol to recover the $3 million of trading profit he made when Berkshire bought chemicals company Lubrizol Corp and could seek damages from him for harm to the company's reputation. The company will cooperate with any government probe in the matter as well.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is probing Sokol, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Sokol's high-profile attorney disputed the board's report and said his client is "a man of uncommon rectitude and probity."

"I have known Mr. Sokol and have represented his companies in business litigation since the mid 1980s," said Barry Levine of the Washington firm Dickstein Shapiro. "He would not, and did not, trade improperly, nor did he violate any fair reading of the Berkshire Hathaway policies."

Levine, who has done work for Sokol's former company MidAmerican Energy, co-heads Dickstein's white collar criminal defense practice and has also represented attempted Ronald Reagan assassin John Hinckley.

The report is an unusual statement from a board that has historically been very close to Buffett, who is CEO and chairman. It may begin to answer the demands of shareholders who expected Buffett to address the controversy at the company's annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska this weekend.

Buffett previously said he would have nothing further to say about Sokol's actions, a stance that became untenable over time given the intense pressure on the conglomerate.

The report paints a picture of Buffett as having been duped by Sokol. However, one shareholder said it was also crafted to exonerate Buffett from wrongdoing.

"This report makes it clearly look like this was not Warren Buffett's fault, this was Sokol's fault," said Michael Yoshikami, chief executive of wealth manager YCMNET Advisors and a Berkshire shareholder. "There really is an effort here to make clear that this was not Warren Buffett's behavior in any way, this was Sokol's behavior."

GAIN AT RISK

Buffett announced Sokol's resignation in March, noting that Sokol bought shares in Lubrizol before suggesting to Buffett that Berkshire buy the company. While Sokol mentioned to Buffett in "passing" that he held some Lubrizol stock, Buffett said he only later found out that Sokol held nearly 100,000 Lubrizol shares worth about $10 million.

Sokol made a profit of about $3 million -- a gain that could be at risk. The Berkshire board said it was still considering legal action against Sokol to, among other things, recover any trading profits he made.

"It hardly sounds like Berkshire is trying to circle the wagons to protect Sokol," said Francis Pileggi, a partner at Fox Rothschild LP in Wilmington, Delaware. "If I had my druthers, I would rather be representing Berkshire in this matter than Sokol in a Delaware court."

Besides the potential civil recovery, Berkshire's board also said it would cooperate with any government investigation. A spokesman for the Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment.

Legal experts said Sokol appears to be in more trouble now than was first thought.

"I think Mr. Sokol has a real problem here," said Duke University Law Professor James Cox. "This is not a close call at all."

FALLEN HEIR

Sokol, who used to run Berkshire subsidiaries MidAmerican and NetJets, was widely seen as Buffett's heir apparent, an image Buffett biographers say the "Oracle of Omaha" cultivated.

Yet Sokol, in his one public appearance since the scandal broke, told CNBC he had no aspiration to the job. In Wednesday's statement, Berkshire said Sokol reiterated as much to Buffett before Buffett announced Sokol's resignation.

When Buffett made that announcement, he said he believed Sokol had not done anything unlawful. The statement Wednesday seemed to suggest otherwise.

"His misleadingly incomplete disclosures to Berkshire Hathaway senior management concerning those purchases violated the duty of candor he owed to the company," the board said -- noting that an executive's duty of candor was part of the duty of loyalty under Delaware law where Berkshire is incorporated.

Berkshire's board also said certain answers Sokol gave to Buffett in response to questions about the nature of his holdings appeared "intended to deceive."

In total, the 18-page statement uses variations on the word "violation" some 11 times.

The board's audit committee held three meetings this month to consider the report.

Berkshire attorney Ron Olson said Sokol was interviewed at least three times regarding his Lubrizol trading and contacts with Citigroup Inc bankers. "In connection with the preparation of the audit committee report, a request for a further interview with Mr. Sokol was made to his attorney. Mr. Sokol was not made available," Olson said in the statement.

The audit committee members are chairman Thomas Murphy, 85, and a decades-long Buffett friend; Donald Keough, 84, a former president of key Buffett holding Coca Cola Co; and former Microsoft executive Charlotte Guyman, 54.

Their report is likely to take some pressure off Buffett this weekend when tens of thousands of shareholders descend on Omaha for Berkshire's annual festival-cum-general-meeting.

"One way or another, Mr. Buffett will have to address this. It's conceivable that this release relieves Mr. Buffett from the chore of addressing what is an unpleasant issue," said Jerry Bruni, CEO and portfolio manager at J.V. Bruni and Co, which owns Berkshire shares and has $450 million of assets under management.

Berkshire's actively traded class B shares were flat at $82.99 in after-hours trading.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel, Moira Herbst, Matthew Goldstein, Dan Wilchins, Alina Selyukh and Jonathan Spicer in New York and Sarah N. Lynch in Washington. Editing by Robert MacMillan)

The Fed trimmed its forecast for 2011 economic growth in a nod to a weak start to the year and bumped up its projections for inflation, which caused some jitters in financial markets.

The central bank's policy-setting committee said after a two-day meeting it will complete the purchase of $600 billion in bonds in June to support the economy's recovery, and said it would keep its balance sheet, currently at $2.67 trillion, steady for a time to ensure its support does not fade.

It also repeated it plans to keep overnight interest rates, which it has held near zero since December 2008, extraordinarily low for "an extended period."

"It is a relatively slow recovery," Bernanke said at a news conference, the first after a policy meeting by a Fed chief in the central bank's 97-year history. "The combination of high unemployment, high gas prices and high foreclosure rates is a terrible combination. A lot of people are having a tough time."

Bernanke appeared nervous at the start of the briefing, held at the central bank's headquarters, but he relaxed as the widely watched, nearly hour-long session progressed.

A hush fell over the normally bustling floor of the New York Stock Exchange with orders drying up as investors tuned into the central bank chief. "It's kind of a novelty," said Kenneth Polcari, managing director at ICAP Equities.

The news conference served multiple purposes for the Fed.

It allowed Bernanke an opportunity to push back against stiff criticism from some lawmakers, economists and foreign officials that the Fed's efforts to prop up the U.S. economy with more than $2 trillion in stimulus would spark inflation.

It was also an opportunity for Bernanke to seize control of an often very public debate among Fed officials over whether the stimulus course could backfire, providing a new tool to deliver a consensus central bank view directly to markets.

"In no way did Bernanke begin laying the groundwork for a near-term reversal in monetary policy," said Michelle Girard, an economist with RBS in Stamford, Connecticut. "The chairman appears watchful but comfortable with the Fed's current stance."

GROWTH LOSING A STEP

In a fresh quarterly forecast, the Fed revised down its growth estimate for 2011 to between 3.1 percent and 3.3 percent from the 3.4 percent to 3.9 percent it saw in January. It said the recovery was proceeding at a "moderate pace," a shift from March when it said it was on "firmer footing."

Bernanke said growth may have slowed to less than a 2 percent annual rate in the first three months of this year after a 3.1 percent advance in the fourth quarter of 2010.

But he added: "I would say that roughly most of the slowdown in the first quarter is viewed by the committee as being transitory." The government releases its first estimate of first quarter GDP on Thursday.

The Fed lowered its projection for unemployment but said it would stay elevated over the central bank's three-year forecast period. The jobless rate stood at 8.8 percent in March.

"The pace of improvement is still quite slow and we are digging ourselves out of a very, very deep hole," Bernanke said.

The central bank sharply raised its estimate for 2011 inflation to account for a surge in oil prices. However, it bumped up its core inflation forecasts only marginally and expressed confidence the jump in the cost of oil would not spark broader inflation.

Financial markets showed some nervousness. Prices for 30-year U.S. government debt hit session lows on the inflation forecasts, while the price of gold -- a traditional inflation hedge -- hit a record high of almost $1,530 an ounce.

The U.S. dollar reached a three-year low against six major currencies as Bernanke spoke. Stock markets, which have been pumped up by the Fed's monetary easing, rose on the expectation that the central bank's support will continue.

Interest rate futures showed traders continued to bet that the Fed would hold off on raising rates until early 2012.

CALLED OUT ON DOLLAR

Bernanke faced broad questioning, including on the falling value of the dollar, which has been undercut by the Fed's easing as other major central banks raised interest rates.

While deferring to currency policy as an issue for the Treasury Department, Bernanke said a strong, stable dollar was in the interests of the United States and the world economy.

To keep its balance sheet from shrinking, the Fed said it will continue to reinvest proceeds from maturing securities it holds, ensuring it would remain a big buyer in debt markets.

Bernanke said a decision to stop that strategy would likely be the first step of a policy tightening, although he offered no timeframe on when that might occur.

As for an increase in interest rates, he suggested that was still some months off. "Extended period suggests that there would be a couple of meetings before action but unfortunately ... we don't know how quickly a response will be required."

Bernanke told a questioner that the trade-off between the benefits of extending the bond-buying program and the potential for wider inflation had become less attractive.

"Inflation has been getting higher, inflation expectations are a bit higher," he said. "It's not clear we can get substantial improvements in payrolls without some additional inflation risks."

(Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke and Caroline Valetkevitch; Writing by Mark Felsenthal and Glenn Somerville; Editing by Tim Ahmann and William Schomberg)