Bosch announced Monday it was buying out fellow German conglomerate Siemens from their home appliance joint venture for 3 billion euros ($3.9 billion).

Siemens said it was selling its 50 percent stake in BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgerate GmbH to focus on its core businesses, including energy, and announced at the same time it was to acquire Dresser-Rand, the U.S. manufacturer of turbines and compressors.

French flag carrier Air France on Monday offered to freeze the expansion of its low-cost operation in a bid to end the longest strike at the airline since 1998.

As the strike entered its second week, management said it would halt the development of its leisure subsidiary Transavia until December, unions said, raising hopes of an end to the crisis.

Moody's maintained its negative rating on France on Friday but -- despite earlier reports -- did not deal the struggling economy a downgrade.

Moody's kept its Aa1 overall rating for the country's debt, but warned of significant risks in the government's efforts at restructuring to deal with its heavy fiscal challenges.

The dollar advanced Friday against other major currencies, while the British pound retreated despite Scotland's vote against breaking from the United Kingdom.

The greenback hit a 14-month high against the euro, as "the coast was clearer for markets to focus on U.S. optimism and expectations for Fed rate hikes in 2015" following the Scottish vote, said Joe Manimbo, senior market analyst at Western Union Business Solutions.

Finance chiefs from G20 nations held talks Saturday, confident they can "change the destiny of the global economy" despite rising world political tensions and mounting fears of financial instability.

The meeting in Cairns aims to thrash out a set of policies to achieve the ambitious goal of raising the total GDP of the 20 major world economies by two percent over the next five years, a target they set in Sydney in February.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Friday urged greater efforts to spur global growth as the head of the World Bank bemoaned a disappointing year and warned of downside risks ahead.

Lew called for more focus on investment and infrastructure to help create jobs in comments ahead of this weekend's meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers in the northern Australian city of Cairns.

The United States and Australia said Friday they were encouraged by progress on rules to reduce the problem of "too-big-to-fail" banks as part of efforts to improve stability after the global financial crisis.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew welcomed the "emerging consensus" on discussions at the international watchdog, the Financial Stability Board, over capital buffers for the world's biggest banks.

The British pound jumped as investors bet that Scottish voters would reject independence based on results that cover more than half of Scotland. Japanese stocks rallied as the yen extended losses against the dollar while other Asian benchmarks were subdued for lack of major economic data.

KEEPING SCORE: Tokyo's Nikkei 225 jumped 1.8 percent to 16,361.77, the highest level since December, as the yen's weakness made exports cheaper for overseas buyers and local stocks more affordable for foreign investors. South Korea's Kospi rose 0.5 percent to 2,057.77 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.4 percent to 24,254.31. The Shanghai Composite Index in mainland China slipped 0.1 percent to 2,313.56 and Sydney's S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.3 percent to 5,431.30.

The European Central Bank said on Thursday that it had leant 82.6 billion euros to 255 banks under its new lending program aimed at boosting the economy via private-sector loans.

"The program is designed to enhance the functioning of the monetary policy transmission mechanism by supporting bank lending to the real economy," the Frankfurt-based central bank said in a statement.

French flag carrier Air France was forced to scrap around 60 percent of flights Thursday, as unions rejected a fresh offer to end a strike now in its fourth day.

Pilots' union SNPL slapped down as "largely insufficient" an offer from Air France to limit the operations of its low-cost subsidiary Transavia France, whose planned expansion has sparked the strike.