The ECB is considering three main options for pumping money into the struggling euro zone economy but two of them could hurt confidence in the bloc's most indebted states, defeating the object of the exercise.

• January 9, 2015

The People's Bank of China will continue to maintain "prudent" monetary policy in 2015, keeping credit growth stable while having its hands free to fine-tune policy when necessary, the regulator said in an online statement on Friday.

• January 9, 2015

After years of outsized growth that turned China into the world's biggest car market, a slowdown is exacerbating tensions between global automakers and local car dealers, with smaller margins leading to tougher negotiations over sharing profits.

• January 8, 2015

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf OPEC allies are showing no sign of considering cutting output to boost oil prices, even though they dipped below $50 a barrel this week.

• January 8, 2015

The euro zone economy ended 2014 with its worst quarter for over a year as further price cutting failed to significantly drive up business activity, adding pressure on the European Central Bank to act, surveys showed.

• January 6, 2015

The parent of Founder Securities, Credit Suisse AG's brokerage venture partner in China, said four of its executives were ordered to cooperate with an official investigation, stirring concerns as a dispute heats up with a major shareholder.

• January 6, 2015

The euro zone has new mechanisms in place that limit the threat of contagion, a spokeswoman for the German finance ministry said on Monday, in response to a question about whether the bloc could cope with a hypothetical Greek exit.

• January 5, 2015

Russia's 2014 oil output hit a post-Soviet record high average of 10.58 million barrels per day (bpd), rising by 0.7 percent helped by small non-state producers, Energy Ministry data showed on Friday.

• January 2, 2015