Moody's on Thursday cut its credit grades for eight Brazilian banks, saying they should not be rated significantly higher than the government in a global environment that has governments backstopping financial institutions.

The banks' "standalone financial strength ratings" fell by one to three notches, mostly to line up at or just one level above Moody's Baa2 rating for Brazil.

Nissan will hire another 1,000 workers at its Mississippi plant as it expands production in the United States, the Japanese automaker said Thursday.

The new hires will bring the plant's workforce to 4,500 people by the end of the year as Nissan adds its Sentra compact car, Frontier pickup truck and Xterra sport utility vehicle to the assembly line.

The euro surged in Asian trade on Friday after European leaders struck a deal on a $150-billion growth pact to shore up the Eurozone, and opened the door to wider use of rescue funds.

The single currency hit $1.2594 in afternoon trade, climbing from $1.2449 in morning Tokyo trade, while it also rose against the Japanese currency to 99.96 yen from 98.60 earlier Friday.

Leaders from the 17 countries that share the embattled euro sealed a dramatic deal Friday to allow emergency measures to aid crisis-hit Italy and Spain, as well as provide billions to boost the economy.

Following tense talks that stretched into the early hours, EU president Herman Van Rompuy told reporters a "real breakthrough" had been struck to calm financial markets and reshape the Eurozone to prevent the crisis recurring.

An explosion targeting a pipeline in eastern Turkey has cut off Iranian natural gas shipments to the country, Anatolia news agency reported on Thursday citing sources from the energy ministry.

The blast occurred at 2300 GMT Wednesday in an area between villages of Hidirli and Kalender in the eastern province of Agri, said Anatolia.

Middle East Airlines (MEA) has formally joined the global airline alliance SkyTeam, becoming its 17th member and second anchor in the fast growing Middle East region.

MEA is the second airline in the MENA region to join SkyTeam in addition to Saudi Arabian Airlines that has joined at the end of May-2012, thus expanding SkyTeam in the region.

Lebanon’s former economy minister Nasser Saidi has resigned as Dubai International Financial Center’s chief economist, Saidi confirmed Thursday on the social media networking Twitter.

Saidi had been Chief Economist at the DIFC since April 2006 and, more recently appointed, Head of External Relations too. He was also Executive Director of the Hawkamah-Institute for Corporate Governance at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and a prime mover in the institute’s establishment.

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.