"Secretary Yellen believes the integrity of markets is important and has asked for a discussion of recent volatility in financial markets and whether recent activities are consistent with investor protection and fair and efficient markets." 

That was a U.S. Treasury official explaining Janet Yellen's desire to investigate whether the activities of online activist traders and the platforms serving them may amount to wrongdoing, after the Treasury Secretary called an emergency meeting of some of the industry's most senior figures. 

This follows the events on the markets over the past fortnight, which have badly rattled Wall Street investors as "retail investors" plowed into stocks such as GameStop and cinema group AMC, the prices of which are moderating now. 

Elsewhere, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos is standing aside from his role running the world's biggest e-commerce platform. Just as quarterly sales hit $100 billion. The man who started the business 30 years ago in his Seattle garage says he wants to refocus on his other passions, namely space exploration and helping fight climate change.

Sticking with tech giants, shares in Google parent Alphabet have jumped after the Silicon Valley giant reported quarterly earnings that surpassed expectations. 

And could an "e-passport" spelling out your COVID-19 vaccination status help ease the return to international travel? Watch our video below to find out more. 

Read on for more of the day's business news.

Louise Greenwood

Digital business correspondent 

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called a meeting of top officials to discuss the mass stock buying by amateur traders over the past two weeks that has caused big losses on Wall Street. 

Heads of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are expected to attend the event to discuss whether tougher regulation for hedge funds, stockbrokers and small investors is required. 

It comes after days of concerted buying by groups of organized online traders pushed up the price of stock that was being "shorted" by top U.S. fund managers. Treasury officials say the meeting may come as early as Thursday.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is stepping down from his role as CEO of the online shopping giant to focus on his other ventures. Bezos, who became the world's richest man after founding Amazon in his garage nearly 30 years ago, said he wanted "time and energy" to focus on new projects, which include his non-profit social action foundation Day 1 Fund and his environmental and aerospace ventures Bezos Earth Fund and Blue Origin. He will be replaced by Andy Jassy, who currently leads Amazon's cloud computing business.

Google's parent company Alphabet has reported bumper revenues for the last quarter of 2020, despite advertisers cutting back on spending in the lockdown gloom. Fourth-quarter advertising sales rose 23 percent compared with the previous year, to $56.9 billion, with sales at its cloud computing business Google Cloud up 46 percent from 2019, despite the service making an overall operating loss. Shares rose on the news.

It's also been a strong quarter for Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which has reported revenues up 37 percent from the same period in 2019 to $34 billion. Strong domestic demand for consumer goods has buoyed results, according to analysts. China is the only major economy to have posted growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Revenues from Alibaba's cloud computing rose 50 percent over the same quarter last year, to $2.5 billion. The planned flotation of its financial technology affiliate Ant Group remains on hold pending discussions with regulators. 

China's second biggest auto maker, FAW Group, is considering buying BMW's main Chinese partner Brilliance China Automotive Holdings for $7.2 billion. The deal would involve FAW purchasing the 30 percent of Brilliance currently owned by top shareholder Huachen Automotive Group, which defaulted on a $1 billion in debt obligations late last year.

The COVID-19 lockdown continues to cause fallout for the energy giants. U.S. oil firm Exxon Mobil lost $22.4 billion last year as demand plunged. CEO Darren Woods has described last year as "an unprecedented event," while announcing a $3 billion investment package in "lower emissions solutions" over the next four years. 

The eurozone's largest retail bank Santander has reported its first ever annual loss, after setting aside increased provisions for bad loans during the COVID-19 pandemic, with writedowns in other parts of its businesses. The final loss for the first half of 2020 stood at $10.5 billion, exacerbated by restructuring costs at its Spanish businesses.

Irish low-cost airline Ryanair has been told to remove adverts described as "irresponsible" for claims made about coronavirus vaccinations. The Advertising Standards Authority said it received the third highest number of complaints ever for the advert, which encouraged people to book holidays on a "Jab & Go" basis after having the COVID-19 treatment. The airline has removed the adverts, but said it disagreed with the ruling.

Japanese car giant Toyota aims to produce 9.2 million vehicles this year, up about 2 percent on its 2019's pre-coronavirus output. The auto maker is hoping strong sales momentum in China and a recovery in North America as well as in the domestic market will fire demand. 

Meanwhile, new car registrations fell by almost a third in Germany last month to around 170,000 vehicles. Car dealerships remain closed in the country's second lockdown. New car registrations in December had been up by almost 10 percent on the previous year. 

Sales fell 5 percent at Vodafone in the three months to December, with a weaker-than-expected performance in its Italian business. Total revenues stood at $15.2 billion, with revenues in Italy down 8 percent amid lower roaming and visitor numbers. 

Amazon is to pay $61 million to settle allegations it cheated some drivers out of customer tips for more than two years. The issue concerned drivers who were working with on demand delivery service Flex. Amazon said it disagreed with some findings but would honor the deal with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. 

An equality report has highlighted the continuing lack of diversity at the top of UK business. Research by recruitment and diversity consultancy Green Park shows there are no black chairpeople, CEOs or chief financial officers at any FTSE 100 company. Only 10 of the 297 top roles in the UK's biggest firms are held by people from ethnic minorities, a figure unchanged since 2014. 

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WATCH: Currently there is no international coordination on quarantine requirements or COVID-19 testing at airports. Non-profit organization The Common Project, with the support of the World Health Organization, has created a "vaccine passport" that would allow authorities to verify an individual's vaccine and testing data, allowing some form of international travel to return.

The European economy performed better than expected during the pandemic. Real gross domestic product (GDP) in the eurozone fell by 0.7 percent in the final quarter of last year, compared with the third quarter. In the 27-nation European Union, GDP fell 5 percent. Market expectations were for these numbers to be worse. 

CGTN Europe was joined by Christel Aranda-Hassel, chief economist for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Mizuho Bank, to discuss the outlook for this year.  

I think it's totally certain that we will have a double-dip recession, the lockdown measures have been extended. There have been more containment measures since Christmas and those have obviously all spilled into the first quarter. So, the first quarter is likely to look weaker than the fourth quarter, even if the fourth quarter surprised on the upside. And I do believe that the first quarter will be negative, but again, not as negative as we saw in spring last year.

So what has the impact of these lockdowns been on the eurozone and wider European GDP? 

First, we're learning to live with lockdowns, but the second big difference is that not all sectors are closed as they were in spring last year. And this is especially true for industry, which continues to operate. And hence what you're seeing is that close contact segments of the economy, that is most of the services sector, are suffering yet again with people having to stay indoors. And you're seeing that in manufacturing, which is holding up.

Can we really expect a recovery in the spring, only a month away? 

Rather than a moderate recovery starting from the beginning of this year, we are certainly pushing that into the second quarter and then expect a strong rebound only in the third quarter. You have increasingly pent up demand, don't forget that there are a lot of us who want to finally go out again and spend money again. And the more you push that pent up demand out, the more likely it is that the bounce back is stronger. But I do agree that we need to wait for the vaccine roll-out to become broader.

And finally the latest figures on poverty levels in the EU are out. In 2019, there were 91 million people at risk of poverty or social exclusion across the whole 27 member states, that's equivalent to a fifth of its entire population. The figure, however, jumps for non-EU nationals to 38 percent, and you are more likely to be poor than not if you live in four member states in particular.