Barack Obama will make his first visit to London as the new American President in April, it emerged today.

Gordon Brown announced that the next G20 summit will be held in Britain on April 2 after seeing off a challenge from Japan to host the meeting of international leaders.

“It will be held in London on April 2, it will deal with the major questions of economic action that are necessary,” Mr Brown said at Prime Ministers’s Questions.

“I have talked to the incoming US administration and president-elect Obama expects to come to Britain at that time.”

The G20 met for a round of emergency talks in Washington on November 15, where they backed co-ordinated tax and interest rate cuts in a bid to revive the flagging world economy.

However, they have yet to agree details of reforms to banking regulation and international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.

In the latest effort to head off a global recession, the EU proposed a 200 billion Euro ($259 billion) stimulus package, as China cut its interest rates.

That came after the US Federal Reserve said yesterday that it would pump a massive $800 billion more into the economy to try to stabilise the reeling financial system there.

The Grove luxury hotel near Watford was on an initial short-list of venues and Birmingham and Manchester were both considered but London emerged as the venue for what could be President Obama’s first foreign trip following his inauguration on January 20.

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