China Railway Construction Corp (601186.SS) (1186.HK) has signed a deal worth nearly $12 billion with Nigeria to build a railway along the West African nation's coast, Chinese state news agency Xinhua said on Thursday.

BMW's (BMWG.DE) China head expects profit margins to narrow as the German premium automaker steps up localization to maintain double-digit growth amid slowing demand and tougher competition in the world's biggest auto market.

In a front overlap crash safety tests of four minivans sold in the United States, only the latest model of the Toyota Motor Corp Sienna scored well, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said on Thursday.

Yahoo Inc struck a deal with Firefox maker Mozilla Corp to replace Google Inc as the default search engine on the Firefox Web browser in the United States, a move that Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said will help boost its flagging search market share.

Credit rating agency Standard and Poor's said on Wednesday that China's over-priced and over-supplied property market and capital-starved Russian banks were likely to face further downgrades in the coming years.

The top U.S. housing finance regulator said on Wednesday his agency would unveil a new framework in early 2015 for how government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will set mortgage guarantee fees.

JetBlue Airways announced Wednesday that it will charge certain customers for their first checked bag, yielding to pressure from analysts who criticized the airline for not adding fees in step with other carriers.

Target Corp (TGT.N) on Wednesday reported its first increase in U.S. same-store sales in four quarters and a quarterly profit above expectations, but said it would review the future of its loss-making Canadian business after the holiday season.

Japanese retail investors' interest in domestic stocks has risen even as they have become more pessimistic on Japan's economic growth outlook this year, a Goldman Sachs Asset Management survey showed on Thursday.

China's factories looked to have hit an air pocket in November as a private survey showed output falling for the first time in six months, adding to concerns about slowing economic momentum and to the case for further policy easing from Beijing.

Asian stocks mostly fell on Thursday as fresh data signalling a further loss of momentum in China's economy weighed on sentiment, while the yen slid to multi-year lows against the dollar and euro.

Microsoft Corp's Azure cloud-computing service, which hosts websites and lets customers store and manage data remotely, suffered serious outages on Tuesday taking its popular MSN web portal offline.

China and New Zealand are to sign a deal which will make it easier to produce television content in the two countries, enabling the South Pacific island nation to showcase its natural landscape to lure more tourists.

German business software maker SAP is doing an about-face on its acquisition strategy and plans no more big new deals in the next few years, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

Blackstone Group LP has reached out to its biggest fund investors about investing in a new investment vehicle with a longer investment horizon than the typical 10-year private equity fund, according to people familiar with the matter

Nearly a decade after losing a bidding war for device maker Guidant to Boston Scientific Corp, Johnson & Johnson finally has a chance for payback at a multibillion-dollar trial set to begin on Thursday.

Buyout firms KKR & Co LP (KKR.N) and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice LLC (CD&R) have teamed up to take PetSmart Inc (PETM.O) private for more than $7.5 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, as the auction for the pet food retailer heats up.

India's economy will accelerate in 2015 but will fail to attain the heady growth rates of the past decade without sweeping structural reforms, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said on Wednesday.

Children and teens are seeing fewer ads for sugary drinks on television, but they remain a prime target for marketers through other means such as product placement and social media, a report released on Wednesday found.

The Ministry of Finance (MOF) is considering increasing the issuance of 30- and 40-year Japanese government bonds by a total of 2 trillion yen ($17 billion) in the new fiscal year starting in April, government officials with knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday.

Ford Motor Co (F.N) on Tuesday said it is recalling about 65,000 Fusion sedans in North America because the key can be removed from the ignition even if the car is not in the "park" position 30 minutes after the ignition is off, the company said.

Volkswagen AG's (VOWG_p.DE) growth in China is expected to slow to around 10 percent this year from 16 percent in 2013 due to a conservative strategy that has limited its production capacity, the head of its Chinese operations said on Tuesday.

Italian industrial conglomerate Finmeccanica (SIFI.MI) said on Tuesday Japan's Hitachi (6501.T) had submitted an offer to buy rail assets it has put on the block as part of plans to cut debt.

European planemaker Airbus aims to deliver the first A350 jetliner to launch customer Qatar Airways by mid-December, the airline said on Tuesday.

IBM (IBM.N) has won an outsourcing contract from Germany's Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) worth 1 billion euros ($1.25 billion) that will see the U.S. company take over the airline's information technology infrastructure services division and staff.

Finland's Nokia (NOK1V.HE) launched a new brand-licensed tablet computer on Tuesday which is designed to rival Apple's(AAPL.O) iPad Mini, just six months after the company sold its ailing phones and devices business to Microsoft (MSFT.O) for over $7 billion.

Low oil prices that threaten producers' profits may be a boon in one way, as they force service companies to keep prices low for the drill bits, cement and piping for oil extraction, even if two of the largest providers of such products merge.

For months, a powerful U.S. senator has been pushing for details of a murky deal under which a Russian manufacturer supplies the rocket engines used to launch America’s spy satellites into space.

The U.S. auto safety regulator on Tuesday called on Japanese supplier Takata and five automakers to expand nationwide a regional recall of potentially deadly air bags, increasing pressure on the industry to act more swiftly in the growing scandal.

The Dow and S&P 500 closed at record highs on Tuesday, lifted by further gains in healthcare shares and hopes for a stronger global economy.