TIMELINE: Global financial turmoil day by day

(Reuters) - Following is a day-by-day summary of recent events in the financial crisis:

SUNDAY SEPT 14

- Investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings files for bankruptcy protection; rival Merrill Lynch & Co agrees to be taken over by Bank of America

- Federal Reserve says for the first time it will accept stock in exchange for cash loans, while 10 of the world's top banks agreed to establish a $70 billion emergency fund, with any one of them able to tap up to a third of that sum.

MONDAY SEPT 15

- American International Group reaches deal with New York state officials giving the insurer access to $20 billion of its own capital.

WEDNESDAY SEPT 17

- Lloyds TSB Group agrees to buy rival HBOS, scooping up Britain's biggest home loan lender in an all-share deal which values HBOS at over 12 billion pounds.

THURSDAY SEPT 18

- The Fed expands its currency swap lines to $247 billion, increasing the line with the ECB to $110 billion and the line with the SNB to $27 billion, while opening new swap facilities with the Bank of Japan of $60 billion, the Bank of England of $40 billion, and the Bank of Canada of $10 billion.

-- The UK Financial Services Authority imposes a temporary ban on short-selling financial stocks, a move echoed in other centers.

FRIDAY SEPT 19

- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson calls for the U.S. government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to take toxic mortgage assets off the books of financial companies to restore financial stability.

News of the bailout plan lifts shares, with the benchmark S&P 500 posting its best two-day rally in 21 years and the FTSE 100 index notching up the biggest gain in its 24-year history.

SATURDAY SEPT 20

- The Bush Administration asks Congress for $700 billion to bail out firms burdened with bad mortgage debt.