PRESS DIGEST-Financial Times, Wall St Journal Asia editions

SINGAPORE, April 7 (Reuters) - The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal carried the following stories in their Asia print and/or Web site editions on Monday. Reuters has not verified these stories.

FINANCIAL TIMES (www.ft.com)

-- Government intervention at a global level is required to tackle the credit crisis, according to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, who has warned that market turmoil will take a serious toll on world growth.

-- Wal-Mart (WMT.N), the world's largest retailer, is to convene a meeting of hundreds of its Chinese suppliers to set out goals for significant reductions in the environmental impact of its vast supply chain.

-- Comparisons between the United States today and Japan in the 1990s are misleading and could lead to the wrong conclusions for economic policy, Richard Fisher, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, has told the Financial Times.

-- The UK is pushing the idea of a Japan-Europe trade agreement in which Japanese manufacturers would gain better access to European markets in return for liberalising its financial services, airline and pharmaceutical industries.

-- Japan's opposition party may prolong the government's agony over the central bank chief selection process this week by threatening to veto its likely nomination for deputy governor, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan hinted on Sunday.

-- Nestle (NESN.VX) has teamed up with Boost Juice, the chain of Australian juice bars, to attack Innocent Drinks' dominance of the smoothie market.

-- The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX.AX) has come under fire from one of the country's most prominent business figures for having a conflict of interest thanks to its dual role as market operator and market regulator.

-- HSBC (HSBA.L) has launched private banking services in China, joining global and local rivals such as Citigroup (C.N), Standard Chartered (STAN.L) and the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China ICBC (601398.SS) in offering wealth management services to the country's surging numbers of rich people. -- Fremantle, the Bertelsmann-owned creator of Pop Idol, will on Monday announce a broad-based alliance with one of Japan's biggest independent television producers designed to crack open the country's insular 2,000 billion yen ($19.7 billion) TV market.

WALL STREET JOURNAL (www.wsj.com)

-- A Chinese court has agreed to consider copyright-infringement cases against two China-based Internet heavyweights that offer illicit music downloading, potentially opening Chinese companies to hefty damage claims they have previously dodged.

-- The government is likely to nominate Masaaki Shirakawa to be chief of Japan's central bank, a person familiar with the matter said. The ruling party hopes to fill the position before a meeting Friday of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations.

-- The president of China's sovereign-wealth fund pledged to increase transparency and said the fund will play no role in the management of the companies it invests in.