Goldman Sachs will advise Dublin on its options for selling the state-rescued Allied Irish Banks, finance minister Michael Noonan said Monday as the government seeks to recoup taxpayers' cash.

Dublin nationalized 99.8 percent of Allied Irish Banks (AIB) in 2010 at the height of the financial crisis, pumping 20.8 billion euros into the lender.

Beer sales in Germany rose for the first time in eight years in 2014 as warm weather and the World Cup football championships increased Germans' thirst for their national drink, the country's brewers said Monday. 

The German beer sector "can look back at a successful year in 2014, when sales exceeded the previous year's figures," the German brewers' federation said in a statement.  

Russia's central bank in 2014 sold $76.1 billion and 5.4 billion euros in attempts to support the ruble, statistics published Monday said, as the currency continued to fall.

Last year, the ruble lost 41 percent of its value against the dollar and 34 percent against the euro as a result of Western sanctions imposed over the crisis in Ukraine and the falling price of oil.

Hungary has restarted gas supplies to neighboring Ukraine, Hungarian pipeline network operator FGSZ Zrt said Sunday, after suspending deliveries in September, prompting criticism from Ukraine's state-owned gas firm Naftogaz.

"I can confirm that gas delivery from Hungary to Ukraine has begun," FGSZ spokeswoman Edina Lakatos told Agence France Presse in an email.

Qatar's international reserves hit an all-time high of $46.5 billion (39 billion euros) in November and are expected to climb higher despite falling oil prices, Qatar National Bank figures revealed.

The latest figure was a jump of almost $7 billion on the level of reserves recorded by the energy-rich Gulf state at the same time in 2013.

Oil prices tumbled again Monday, while most Asian stock markets also retreated after a sell-off in New York at the end of last week that came in reaction to data showing weak U.S. wage growth.

The news on wages, which overshadowed another forecast-beating rise in jobs creation, pushed the dollar down against the euro and yen as it complicates the Federal Reserve's plans to hike interest rates.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has arrived in OPEC's leading oil producer Saudi Arabia, state media reported on Sunday, after he visited Iran to discuss the impact of plummeting crude prices.

Maduro landed on Saturday in Riyadh where Deputy Crown Prince Moqren bin Abdul Aziz received him, the Saudi Press Agency said.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, flanked by Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro, vowed Saturday to "neutralize" the threat posed to both countries by plummeting oil prices, in a barely veiled broadside at Saudi Arabia.

OPEC members Iran and Venezuela are reeling from a slide in the cost of crude to around $50 per barrel from $100 just six months ago, a precipitous fall that is straining their budgets.

Moscow may ask for early payment on its three billion dollar loan to Ukraine, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Saturday, accusing Kiev of violating loan conditions.

"Ukraine has violated the conditions of this loan, specifically that Ukraine's public debt does not surpass 60 percent of its GDP," the minister told Russian news agencies.

Cyprus defended on Saturday the decision to halt flights by its national carrier, calling the closure of debt-laden Cyprus Airways "unavoidable", as pilots vowed action against the government.

Government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides told state radio that authorities had tried to rescue the stricken carrier, but that its problems were "long standing" and irreversible.