The International Monetary Fund chief urged on Monday oil-exporting Gulf countries to introduce taxes, warning that low crude prices are likely to stay for an "extended period".

Gulf economies "need to strengthen their fiscal frameworks and reengineer their tax systems by reducing their heavy reliance on oil revenues and by boosting non-hydrocarbon sources of revenues," Christine Lagarde told a forum in Abu Dhabi.

Branches of at least three Russian banks have been attacked during a spate of weekend violence across Ukraine that coincided with the second anniversary of the ouster of Kiev's Moscow-backed leadership.

The latest incidents occurred overnight Sunday in Lviv -- a nationalist bastion in the west of the former Soviet republic -- where unknown assailants torched the central city office of Russia's top bank Sberbank.

Banks in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are being increasingly challenged by a liquidity squeeze resulting from low oil prices, Moody's Investor Services said on Monday.

A sustained loss in oil revenue is likely to reduce government and government-related deposits in banks and could eventually reduce state support for the banking system, the ratings agency said.

China's overcapacity in heavy industries is wreaking "far-reaching" damage on the global economy, with steel production "completely untethered" from market demand, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said Monday.

The Asian giant's steel industry manufactures more than the next four largest producers combined -- Japan, India, the U.S., and Russia -- the chamber said in a report, warning that more than 60 percent of China's aluminium industry has negative cash flow. 

Oil prices recovered in Asia on Monday after a steep fall in the previous session, with U.S. crude back above $30 a barrel as traders mulled the impact of a potential freeze by key producers.

Crude spiked sharply last week after major exporters held talks on a potential agreement to reduce a global supply glut that has dragged prices to their lowest levels in nearly 13 years this month.

Global banking giant HSBC on Monday reported a shock pre-tax loss in the last quarter of 2015 with results for the year missing analysts' expectations, as it grapples with "seismic shifts" in the world economy.

HSBC last year announced a radical overhaul of its business to cut costs that included shedding 50,000 jobs worldwide, exiting unprofitable businesses and focusing more on Asia. 

President Muhammadu Buhari is to visit the Gulf for a week-long tour, with a focus on ending the global slump in oil prices that has hammered Nigeria's crude-reliant economy, his office said on Sunday. 

Buhari, accompanied by Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, the junior oil minister and head of the state-run oil firm, begins his trip in Riyadh on Monday, meeting King Salman bin Abdulaziz and senior Saudi officials. 

Six officials of Chinese megabank ICBC have been placed in detention by Spanish authorities on suspicion of laundering tens of millions of euros, judicial sources said on Saturday.

They were detained overnight and while three of them can be freed if they post bail of 100,000 euros ($111,000) each, the others will remain in custody for the time being, the Madrid appeals court said.

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi opened on Saturday an economic summit attended by African leaders and businessmen that aims to boost trade and investment across the continent.

More than 1,200 delegates including some heads of state will negotiate business agreements for the next two days at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, to attract private sector investments in Africa.

The euro pushed higher against the dollar Friday as European leaders reached a deal that could keep Britain in the European Union, avoiding a much-feared "Brexit."

Early in the day the dollar was ahead, after U.S. consumer price data for January signaled a pickup in inflation that would support the Federal Reserve sticking to its plan to tighten monetary policy with higher interest rates over this year.