Canada's Valeant Pharmaceuticals International extended its unsolicited offer to buy US Botox maker Allergan on Friday until the end of the year.

The $53.5 billion offer had been due to expire at 5:00 pm (2100 GMT). Valeant said it was now keeping it in play until 5:00 pm on December 31.

Rating agency Fitch on Friday revised Ireland's sovereign credit rating up a notch to 'A-', citing an "employment-led recovery" with a healthier banking system.

Fitch is the second of the big three agencies to pull Ireland's rating up from 'BBB+' to 'A-' and thus higher into investment grade territory.

The EU "shot itself in the foot" by imposing trade sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in a radio interview Friday.

The European sanctions over Moscow's perceived role in separatist violence in eastern Ukraine "hurt us more than the Russians," Orban said during his weekly interview spot on state-run radio.

High levels of crime and violence in Papua New Guinea are causing substantial losses to 80 percent of businesses, hampering the nation's economic development, the World Bank said Friday.

A new report, "The Cost of Crime and Violence to Businesses", said security in particular represented a large and growing expense in the often lawless Pacific nation.

Samsung said Friday it had reached a deal to buy a U.S. home automation startup SmartThings, as the South Korean electronics giant aims to expand beyond the increasingly saturated smartphone market.

The world's top smartphone maker said it had entered into a deal to buy the U.S. app maker, which allows people to monitor and control their home appliances via mobile devices. 

The dollar held steady in Asia Friday on easing concerns over the situation in Ukraine as Russian President Vladimir Putin called for an end to the crisis in the violence-wracked country.

In Tokyo afternoon trading, the greenback fetched 102.53 yen, up from 102.45 yen in New York.

Standard & Poor's has cut the credit ratings of three major Austrian banks in response to new legislation winding up the deeply troubled and nationalized lender Hypo Alde Adria.

The ratings were cut by one notch for Erste Group, Raiffeisen Zentralbank and UniCredit of Italy's local unit Bank Austria, S&P said late on Wednesday. The outlook for the ratings is negative.

U.S. sanctions against Moscow appeared Thursday to have claimed their first major victim when the head of Russia's largest oil company was reported to have asked the government for help to cover its massive debt.

The well-connected Vedomosti business daily said Rosneft chief Igor Sechin had written a letter to the cabinet outlining five ways it could help repay nearly $45 billion (34 billion euros). More than half the amount comes due by the end of next year.

Gold consumption fell by an annualized 16 percent in the second quarter of 2014 as Chinese and Indian buyers cut back on record purchases a year earlier, sector data showed Thursday.

A director of the World Gold Council (WGC) forecast the full-year result would also be lower than in 2013, but probably not represent as big a drop as during the three months from April through June.

The French economy ground to a standstill in the second quarter of the year, official figures published Thursday showed, further fanning fears that France could drag down a stuttering eurozone recovery.

France's gross domestic product was flat in the second three months of the year, according to national statistics office INSEE, following zero growth in the first quarter.