Oil price fell below $30 a barrel on international market for the first time since 2004. The $30 mark is both a psychological and financial threshold. Brent crude, used as an international benchmark, fell as low as $29.96, but bounced back to trade at $30.22

Airbus Group's corporate venture capital fund Airbus Ventures has announced its first investment that was extended to a Phoenix-based Local Motors Inc. Airbus Ventures is keen on startups in the aviation industry that support Airbus business strategy. Local Motors Inc develops open source designs for building cars, helicopters and airplanes.

Majority of e-Commerce startups are running below expectations. Some of them sold for a fraction of their previous valuations. Groupon, One Kings Line and Wish.com were few examples that give insight of what's happening.

Oil and gas market have been tattering due to existing sharp downtrend in price. Many oil companies have been writing down the value of shale assets over the past 20 months since prices started crashing. BHP Billinton Ltd. has also become dependent on bank debts to maintain soaring expenses and plans to cut dividends for the first time in 25 years. Finally, following the industry trend, BHP has announced for writing down US energy assets worth $7.2 billion.

The top online search engine already had the initial discussions with the three Indian startups. Baidu seeks to expand to India due to growing online population and internet user.

The debt burden of South African farmers reached to over Rand 125 billion ($7.5 billion). The total debt of farmers was up 14 percent in 2015 to Rand117 billion. Economists alert that the prevailing slump in commodities markets, tighter monetary, fiscal policy, drought conditions and drop in value of Rand will trigger higher than expected inflation rate.

Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group is said to have agreed to buy a 20 percent stock in Philippines' lender Security Bank Corp for $773 million (36.9 billion pesos), as an effort to strengthen its growth in Southeast Asia.

Qualcomm Inc. and TDK group tie up to form a $ 3 billion project in Singapore. After completion of the venture by 2017, Qualcomm will own 51% of the new company with a provision to purchase TDK’s stake at a later time. Following the joint venture, Qualcom’s share price has fall a little but TDK share price has jumped by 5.5%, highest change within last two moths.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has finally agreed to pay $5.1 billion on Wednesday to resolve a seven years’ pending dispute over faulty mortgage securities. The penalty amount remains lower compared to those counted by other Wall Street competitors. Fourth quarter profit of the firm may be hit by the penalty counting. But investors welcome the settlement and its share price rises by 1.5% on Thursday.

The UK-based technology firms mobilized $3.6 billion (£2.5 billion) funds from venture capitalists (VC) in 2015 and this is 70 percent higher than $2.1 billion in 2014. London technology companies accounted for more than half of the mobilized VC funds. The increasing investor appetite for technology startups and fintech firms has been the main factor that propelled the VC funding.