State Bank of India, the nation's top lender by assets, posted better-than-expected quarterly bad debt levels on Friday and said it now expected an improvement, a long-awaited sign of easing pressure that helped its shares jump over five percent.

Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry Ltd is cutting jobs across the world, the company said on Friday, as it consolidates its software, hardware and applications business.

Citigroup said on Friday it is selling its margin foreign exchange business, including the CitiFX Pro and TradeStream platforms to U.S.-based FXCM and Danish investment bank SAXO Bank.

The contest for Nokia's (NOK1V.HE) maps business has become a three-way race between German carmakers, a consortium including Uber and Baidu, and a third group including China's Tencent and Navinfo, people familiar with the process said.

Oil fell about 2 percent on Friday as a rallying dollar and profit-taking ahead of a long U.S. holiday weekend cut short a two-day run-up in crude prices.

French telecommunications group Altice SA is talking to several banks about raising debt for a potential bid for Time Warner Cable Inc, the second-largest U.S. cable operator, according to people familiar with the matter.

China's dominant taxi-hailing firm Didi Kuaidi will spend 1 billion yuan ($161.39 million) on promotions, the company said on Friday, in an aggressive expansion that will help lure in riders and fend of rivals like U.S. firm Uber Technologies Inc.

A group of 18 mostly Democratic U.S. senators on Friday urged the Obama administration to stop Royal Dutch Shell's preparations for oil exploration in the Arctic, saying the region has a severely limited capacity to respond to accidents.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen was clearer than ever on Friday that the central bank was poised to raise interest rates this year, as the U.S. economy was set to bounce back from an early-year slump and as headwinds at home and abroad waned.

The Bank of Japan offered a slightly more upbeat view of the economy on Friday and its governor shrugged off the need for more monetary stimulus, dismissing market concerns that the recovery is too slow to accelerate inflation toward the bank's target.

Oil prices slipped on Friday as worries over the impact of war in the Middle East on crude supplies were outweighed by reports of profit-taking ahead of a long weekend.

Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) will sell a controlling 51 percent stake in its China-based data-networking business to China's Tsinghua Unigroup for at least $2.3 billion, forming a partnership designed to create a Chinese technology powerhouse.

There were no fancy economic models or forecasts when former Florida Governor Jeb Bush first tossed out the idea that 4 percent annual growth should be the overarching goal for the U.S. economy.

Greece expects to reach a cash-for-reforms deal with its creditors in the next 10 days and aims to meet all its payments in June, the government's spokesman said on Friday, after the prime minister met with EU leaders.

Global stocks rose and bond yields fell on Friday, as investors shrugged off slowing global growth and focused instead on the continued stimulus provided by the world's major central banks.

Market research firm Gartner Inc estimated 7.3 million Chromebooks would be sold this year, helped mainly by demand from the education industry.

Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N), the world's No. 2 PC maker, reported a quarterly profit above market estimates, helped by cost cuts, sending its shares up more than 3 percent in after-market trading.

Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn said Thursday that mutual funds will increasingly realize that being underweight shares of Apple will hurt their performance as the technology giant continues to innovate.

The S&P 500 closed at a record high on Thursday after disappointing economic data bolstered expectations that an interest rate hike is likely to come only later in the year.

Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to provide $110 billion in aid for Asian infrastructure projects, as China prepares to launch a new institutional lender that is seen as encroaching on the regional financial clout of Tokyo and its ally Washington.

Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual SA (BPAC3.SA) and its partners P2Brasil and GMR Energia jointly sold 100 percent of renewable energy company Latin America Power (LAP) to SunEdison, BTG and P2 said on Thursday.

Indian e-commerce firms are offering funding help and tech support to woo small retailers, emulating a strategy used by Chinese online retail giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd to expand into the towns and villages home to the majority of consumers.

World shares hovered near record highs on Thursday after downbeat Chinese manufacturing data kept pressure on Beijing for more stimulus and the Federal Reserve signalled higher U.S. interest rates are still some way off.

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose slightly more than expected last week, but the underlying trend continued to suggest the labor market was tightening.

Canadian e-commerce software maker Shopify Inc (SHOP.N) (SH.TO) said its U.S. initial public offering was priced at $17 per share, valuing the company at about $1.27 billion.

Malaysian airline AirAsia Bhd's (AIRA.KL) loyalty program is in talks with private equity investors about selling a minority stake, which could value the business at about $330 million, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Oil prices rebounded on Wednesday, with U.S. crude snapping a five-day decline, after another weekly inventory draw but gains were still limited by a huge supply overhang and concerns about a stronger dollar.

U.S. stocks ended marginally lower on Wednesday after Wall Street saw little in the minutes from last month's Federal Reserve meeting to alter expectations of when the central bank will raise interest rates.

Federal Reserve officials believed it would be premature to hike interest rates in June even though most felt the U.S. economy was set to rebound from a dismal start to the year, according to minutes from their April policy meeting released on Wednesday.

Microsoft's plan to make its new version of Windows a mobile hit by letting it accept tweaked Apple and Android apps has met an obstacle: some of the software developers the company needs to woo just aren't interested.