The European Commission's top euro official said Friday there is still a chance for Britain to engineer an amicable "soft Brexit" departure from the EU, but stressed it is up to London to decide.

Dutch top bank ING said Friday it is moving dozens of trading jobs to London, defying expectations of an exodus of financial sector professionals from Britain because of Brexit.

An ING spokeswoman said 60 jobs would be moved from Amsterdam and Brussels to the City of London to join its corporate finance banking team of 650 people already working there, creating a single unit.

Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank said Friday it hoped to raise as much as $100 billion for a new technology investment fund it has set up in partnership with Saudi Arabia.

The company said it would invest about $25 billion in the SoftBank Vision Fund over the next five years, while the Saudi public investment fund will "consider investing in the fund and becoming the lead investment partner".

Samsung on Friday said the crisis over its exploding Note 7 smartphones would cost another $3 billion-plus in lost profit over the next two quarters, but hoped expanded sales of its other flagship handset would help cushion the impact.

Thailand's biggest foreign investor, Japan, said Friday it would offer support to its firms in the kingdom as concerns grow that the death of its revered monarch could derail the economy.

Japan has more than 4,000 companies operating in Thailand, dubbed the "Detroit of Southeast Asia" due to the huge number of auto manufacturing plants.

The European rejection of a "progressive" trade pact with Canada would send the wrong message to the world, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned Thursday.

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said Thursday that U.S. banks had confirmed to him they would move some activities out of Brexit Britain to other European countries.

Apple's new iPhone 7 series gave Taiwan microchip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) a boost Thursday as the firm announced profits were up by almost a third compared with last year.

The EU misspent 5.5 billion euros ($6 billion) in 2015, the bloc's financial watchdog said Thursday, warning that Brussels needed to regain the trust of European citizens shaken by Brexit and other crises. 

Badly spent funds went on paying overcharged personnel costs for developing cloud computing services, it said.

Britain's stock market scored a record high Tuesday as share prices were boosted by the weak pound, which lifts exporters, and a recent bounce in oil prices.