It took a century for Sharp to evolve from making pencils into one of the world's top consumer electronics brands, but the Japanese company has now signalled another huge shift: it will become Taiwanese.

Until early the 1990s, Japanese girls received homemaking education while boys didn't On paper, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan to get more women into Japan's shrinking workforce - also referred to as "womenomics" - looked great.

Dell Inc is set to announce an agreement on Monday to sell its non-core information technology consulting division to Japan's NTT Data Corp for $3.5 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.

China's industrial profits returned to growth in the first two months of 2016, despite weakening business conditions and slowing economic growth in the world's second-largest economy.

The European Central Bank had lent 7.3 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in ultra-cheap loans to banks in the latest round of its plan to kick-start lending to households and businesses.

Chinese oil giant PetroChina has posted its lowest profit since 1999 with the company citing a struggling global economy and slump in international oil prices last year.

A laggard in embracing the 'fintech', or financial technology revolution, Japan is set to ease investment restrictions that could free up the flow of capital in an economy sitting on an estimated $9 trillion in individuals' cash deposits.

Nigerian Thelma West is a rare gem in the diamond world as a woman in a male-dominated sector with few Africans, despite the continent being the main source of the precious rocks.

Amazon.com Inc, under pressure from an activist shareholder to disclose its policies on gender pay equality, said on Wednesday its female employees earned as much as their male counterparts, according to a survey it recently conducted.

Japanese trading firm Mitsubishi Corp said on Thursday it would post its first ever annual loss in the year to March 31, totalling 150 billion yen ($1.33 billion), hurt by massive writedowns from a slump in commodities.

Low interest rates and exposure to substantial amounts of bad debt have severely weakened Europe's banks, and should cause them to re-evaluate their business models, the region's banking supervisor said Wednesday.

Former guerrilla fighter Gladis Giraldo says she ultimately realised that violence was not the answer.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the world's biggest maker of smartphones and memory chips, announced on Thursday that it plans to adopt a corporate culture akin to a startup, seeking to become more nimble as growth slows.

An activist hedge fund Thursday launched a bid to replace the entire Yahoo board of directors, saying the struggling Internet firm's management team has "failed to deliver results."

China has enough policy tools to keep the economy stable despite "deep rooted" structural problems and downward pressure, Premier Li Keqiang said on Thursday, channeling calm amid concerns about the country's slowdown.

An obscure corner of the US IPO market is getting a new lease on life as more Wall Street banks and institutional investors turn to blank-check acquisition vehicles, once the domain of only a few underwriters and hedge funds, for better fortunes.

Consumer confidence in Germany is beginning to feel the heat from global economic risks, a poll found on Thursday. "Optimism among German consumers faded somewhat in March," market research company GfK said in a statement.

Nearly a decade after the iPhone broke the mould for mobile phones the question being asked is whether the evolution of the smartphone has finally come to an end, as even Apple now treats older, smaller 4-inch screens as something new.

MOBARAK Musa, a mobile telephone salesman from Syria, has spent 10 years working in Saudi Arabia, sending part of his wages back home to support his parents and three brothers. A shift in Saudi labour policy means he won't be able to do so for much longer.

New Zealand's Fonterra -- the world's largest dairy cooperative -- announced a 123 percent rise in interim profit on Wednesday but warned its farmers faced "unprecedented pressure" amid a slump in global milk prices.