VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Gulf Arab oil exporters will have to reform their state spending and make cuts in some areas because of weak oil prices, Kuwaiti Finance Minister Anas al-Saleh said on Saturday.

Ukraine's and Russia's leaders have reached a preliminary agreement on a price for gas supplies this winter but Kiev may need international help to pay, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Saturday.

The German and French economy ministers have asked experts in Berlin and Paris to come up with reform recommendations for both countries in an apparent attempt to avert a full-blown clash between the euro zone heavyweights over economic policy.

France and Italy will keep pressure on Germany this week to use government money to revive the euro zone's stagnating economy but in a sign of inertia, a promised list of projects to create growth will not be ready until December.

The chance of a hard landing for China's economy is very small in spite of worries about the country's real-estate sector, the chief economist of the People's Bank of China said on Saturday.

The International Monetary Fund's member countries on Saturday said bold action was needed to bolster the global economic recovery and they urged governments not to squelch growth by tightening budgets too drastically, although Germany poured cold water on the idea of a new global "crisis."

Egypt has paid back $500 million to Qatar and will soon return the remainder of the money the Gulf state deposited into the Egyptian central bank after the 2011 revolution, the bank's governor said on Saturday.

The finance ministers of Japan and South Korea will hold their first bilateral meeting in nearly two years on Friday, on the sidelines of this week's autumn IMF gathering in Washington, the Japanese Ministry of Finance said.

A selloff on Ukraine's dollar debt is focusing attention on a controversial $3 billion bond held by Russia, raising investor concerns that President Vladimir Putin could use the issue to trigger a cascade of defaults across Kiev's sovereign Eurobonds.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras announced cuts on Saturday to unpopular taxes introduced at the height of Greece's debt crisis, in a bid to show that over four years of austerity are finally nearing an end.

Greece expects its economy to grow in the third quarter, its first quarterly expansion since the start in 2008 of a crippling recession that has wiped out nearly a quarter of GDP, its finance minister said on Saturday.

More than 380 people were arrested in a race riot that occurred Sunday in Moscow.

The European Commission approved the restructuring plan of BCP, Portugal's largest listed bank.

Greece's economy still critical despite slight improvement.

The US State Department announced an international travel alert for terrorist attacks in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.