General Electric Co is planning to divest stakes in its joint venture auto-financing and credit card businesses in South Korea, people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as the U.S. conglomerate continues to trim its exposure to the financial services sector.

Corporate networking site LinkedIn Corp (LNKD.N) reported better-than-expected quarterly profit and revenue as more businesses used its services to hire staff.

Starbucks Corp's (SBUX.O) early re-launch of its popular Pumpkin Spice latte drink failed to heat up business at its U.S. cafes, disappointing Wall Street and sending the company's shares down almost 5 percent.

Ukraine, Russia and the European Union signed a deal on Thursday on the resumption of Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine for winter after several months of delay during the conflict in Ukraine.

Automakers in Brazil are facing the sharpest slowdown since 1999 and it could be a year or more before things turn the corner.

With just five months left before Governor Haruhiko Kuroda's self-imposed deadline for banishing deflation, the Bank of Japan is preparing for failure, and the first casualty could be its facade of board unity.

Finance ministers and tax chiefs from 51 countries signed an agreement on Wednesday to automatically swap tax information, which Germany's finance minister said heralded the end of tax evasion via secret bank accounts.

A boardroom tussle brewing for months at Sanofi came to a head on Wednesday when France's top drugmaker fired its chief executive, wiping more billions off its share price.

Japan's Fujifilm Holdings Corp said it was difficult to estimate the profitability of its influenza drug Avigan, which has been earmarked to fight Ebola, given the uncertainty over the spread of virus, a company executive said on Thursday.

A robust pace of business spending likely buoyed U.S. economic growth in the third quarter, a sign corporate chieftains have confidence in the sustainability of the recovery.