Brazil's efforts to bring down its debt will translate into renewed investor confidence and additional room to continue poverty-reduction policies for the years to come, incoming Finance Minister Joaquim Levy said on Saturday.

Britain's Merlin Entertainments is to open a Legoland theme park in South Korea, as part of its long term expansion plans to generate more of its income from overseas markets.

British boy band One Direction became the only group to score four consecutive No. 1 debuts on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday, ousting Taylor Swift from her chart-topping reign.

Blistering sales this week of Latin American art set auction records for 31 artists spanning three centuries, ranging from creators in the Spanish colonial period to living artists like Colombia's Fernando Botero.

Essar Group, a $39 billion Indian conglomerate, is looking to tap frozen Iranian oil revenues to pay for its steel exports to Tehran, in a novel attempt to work around Western financial sanctions against the OPEC member state.

The chief executive of Commerzbank is predicting a wave of mergers among Germany's cooperative and savings banks. Martin Blessing, who heads Germany's second biggest bank, noted that there were still almost 2,000 banks in Germany, in contrast to about 20 in Spain.

The European Commission postponed until March its decisions on whether the 2015 budgets of France, Italy and Belgium break EU rules, saying it needed more information to be sure.

Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N) is working with Goldman Sachs (GS.N) to explore the sale of its Wella hair care business that could be worth around $7 billion, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as the world's largest consumer products company streamlines its business.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is backing loss-making Air Berlin in a dispute over whether its Abu Dhabi-based partner Etihad is exercising too much control, Focus magazine reported on Saturday.

German pilots' union VC said late on Friday that talks with carrier Deutsche Lufthansa over early retirement benefits have broken down and new strikes are possible at any time, although not at Christmas.