Saudi Arabia's oil giant Aramco on Wednesday announced plans to merge its company Vela with Saudi firm Bahri to form the world's fourth largest oil transporter.

Under a non-binding memorandum of understanding, Bahri would pay Vela $1.3 billion, made up of $832,000 in cash and the rest in stocks.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras will ask EU peers Thursday to "respond to sacrifices" by recession-hit Greeks seeking to amend the terms of a second EU-IMF bailout, a report said.

The top-selling daily Ta Nea said that Samaras, who is recovering from eye surgery and will miss an EU summit in Brussels, made the call in a letter to be delivered by President Carolos Papoulias, who will represent Greece.

Europe's main stock markets nudged higher at the start of trading on Thursday with traders waiting to see if an EU summit will deliver concrete steps to tackle the Eurozone’s spreading debt crisis.

London's benchmark FTSE 100 index rose 0.03 percent to 5,525.71 points, Frankfurt's DAX 30 won 0.05 percent to 6,232.12 points and in Paris the CAC 40 gained 0.11 percent to 3,066.55.

Turkey will sign Tuesday a deal with neighboring Azerbaijan on building the $7 billion Trans-Anatolian natural gas pipeline (TANAP) to carry Azeri gas to European markets, its prime minister said.

This project is about transferring the natural gas extracted from the second phase of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field to Europe, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a parliamentary address.

Business executives around the world have become much more gloomy about the global economy as the Eurozone crisis pounds on, according to a new survey released Tuesday by McKinsey & Co.

Around one-half of 1,349 executives surveyed in early June said they expect the economy to worsen through the rest of the year, while only 20 percent see things getting better.

Crude prices were mixed in Asian trade Wednesday as investors grappled with the escalating debt crisis in the Eurozone ahead of a key European Union summit.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for August, was up 13 cents at $79.49 a barrel in morning trade as the contract stayed below the psychologically important $80.00 threshold.

Boeing on Tuesday named Raymond Connor as the new head of its commercial airplanes business, succeeding Jim Albaugh, who is retiring after 37 years of service at the U.S. aerospace giant.

Conner, 57, was appointed president and chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, effective immediately, Boeing said in a statement.

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world's oldest bank, may be forced to request over three billion euros ($3.75 billion) in state aid, just as Italy struggles to stave off debt crisis contagion.

The Tuscan bank may ask for more than three billion euros in so-called "Tremonti bonds" in order to pay off a government loan agreed in 2009 and plug a capital gap, Il Sole 24 Ore business daily said on Tuesday.

The EU embargo on Iranian crude due to come fully into effect on Sunday, on the heels of further U.S. sanctions, has already bitten deeply into the Islamic republic's all-important oil sector.

Despite official denials, Iran oil exports have plummeted some 40 percent in the past six months, to 1.5 million barrels per day (mbpd), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Toyota Motor is expanding a tie-up with Germany's BMW on hybrid and fuel-cell vehicle technology as the global automakers push further into the "green" market, a report said Monday.

The two firms' top executives will announce in Germany this week that they are boosting a previously announced agreement involving joint research on next-generation lithium ion batteries, the Nikkei business daily said.