Arroyo appoints finance minister

Bank president and former congressman Margarito Teves will take over the finance portfolio as Arroyo began rebuilding her economic team after mass resignations.

Teves, 61, replaces Cesar Purisima, who resigned along with a group of other ministers last week and called on Arroyo to quit over allegations of electoral fraud.

The appointment helped calm Manila's unsteady financial markets, with both the stock market and the peso attaining a little stability.

Teves, who is president of state-owned Land Bank of the Philippines, has a track record of pushing for economic reforms from when he was a congressman in the 1990s.