Two Korean finance firms have submitted bids to buy parts of the Asian operations of Dutch banking giant ING Group, reports said Monday.

Korea Life Insurance, the country's second-largest life insurer, has bid for ING's Southeast Asian operations, which cover Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand, Dow Jones Newswires said.

The United Arab Emirates on Sunday inaugurated a pipeline to pump oil from east coast terminals, bypassing the strategic Strait of Hormuz which Iran has threatened to shut down, state-run WAM news agency reported.

The first shipment of 500,000 barrels of oil from the Habshan fields in Abu Dhabi emirate were pumped through the pipeline to Fujairah oil terminal on the Gulf of Oman, where it was loaded on a tanker headed for Pakistan.

Ford is recalling about 8,270 2013 Escape SUVs due to a problem with carpet padding that can interfere with braking, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Sunday.

"Ford is recalling certain model year 2013 Escape vehicles manufactured from March 8, 2012 through June 7, 2012," the statement said.

The U.S. dollar advanced against the euro in Asian trade on Monday as markets reacted calmly to China's growth slowdown and took heart from the earnings prospects of U.S. banks, analysts said.

The euro fetched $1.2239 in afternoon Asian trade compared to $1.2248 in late New York trade on Friday. The European currency also slipped against the yen, buying 96.82 yen from 97.08 yen.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Sunday hailed an emergency $100 million donation received from Saudi Arabia after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited the kingdom last week.

"Prime minister Salam Fayyad and the Palestinian people thank... King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz after he instructed the Saudi finance ministry to transfer $100 million to the Palestinian Authority treasury at the request of president Mahmud Abbas," Fayyad's office said.

Authorities in the West German region of North Rhine-Westphalia have bought data on German clients of a Swiss bank suspected of tax evasion, a report said on Saturday.

Tax authorities had acquired a computer disc with data concerning around 1,000 German clients of the private Coutts Bank, a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the report in the Financial Times Deutschland said in its online edition.

The head of India's vehicle-to-steel conglomerate Tata Group says he still has high hopes for the Nano, billed as the world's cheapest car, despite a slow sales start.

"The fundamental economies of the Nano... will continue to establish itself in the Indian market with a wider sales and service network," Tata chairman Ratan Tata said in the firm's annual report released on Friday.

Credit card giants Visa and MasterCard agreed Friday to pay more than $6 billion to millions of merchants which had sued them for allegedly fixing card-use fees.

In a negotiated settlement to resolve the seven-year-old case, Visa agreed to pay $4.03 billion to settle the class-action lawsuit while MasterCard and banks that issue cards and were also part of the suit will pay $2.02 billion, according to documents filed in federal court in New York.

Energy Minister Jebran Bassil signed on Friday a contract to lease power-generating vessels from Turkey.

The contract was signed between Lebanon and Turkey’s Karadeniz company and the first ship is expected to arrive in Lebanon after 120 days.

JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, said Friday that its loss from a highly publicized trading blunder had grown to $4.4 billion, more than double the bank's original estimate of $2 billion.

The bank also said that it was reducing its net income for the first quarter by $459 million because it had discovered information that "raises questions about the integrity" of values placed on certain trades.