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.

The San Francisco-based cloud software company Anaplan has closed the latest round of VC funding to the tune of $90 million giving a valuation of the company at $1.09 billion. The latest investment round was led by Indian firm Premji Invest.

The operator of Turkey’s busiest airport, TAV Havalimanlari Holding AS, is in talks to invest in businesses in the Philippines and Belgrade.

GoPro Inc., Sun Mateo, California based company is going to cut 7% people out of its 1500 employees following poor sales revenue in Q4. Some technical issues have been blamed for sluggish sales during the fourth quarter from the action camera maker’s behalf. But the company axes over the employees to restructure expenses. However, analysts presume, the fall in sales revenue may not be up to that magnitude.

Like other tech giants, Shape Security Inc., ‘Botnets’ security service provider has been eyeing to enter into Chinese ecommerce market since long. Inclusion of Beijing based investor, Northern Light and raising sufficient funds for spreading elsewhere- appear as two contributing factors. These factors have led Shape to penetrate the world’s largest ecommerce zone.

A group of technology executives in Canada and U.S. launched a Toronto-based $100 million venture fund. The group is focusing to fund enterprise software to establish its investment portfolio.