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.

President Barack Obama and his teenaged daughters, Sasha and Malia, went to an independent book store in Washington to buy books as a way to promote Small Business Saturday, an event aimed at boosting small businesses.

U.S. shoppers spent slightly less money at brick-and-mortar stores on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday than across the same two days in 2013, while online sales surged to record highs, data showed on Saturday.