Saudi Arabia has granted three foreign consortiums contracts worth $22.5 billion (16.9 billion euros) to build a Riyadh metro, the kingdom announced at a news conference in the capital late Sunday.

The consortiums are led by U.S., Spanish and Italian firms.

Kuwait telecom giant Zain's net profits dived 14.0 percent in the second quarter of 2013, the company said on Monday, blaming currency fluctuations from its unit in Sudan.

The company posted a net profit of 70.9 million dinars ($248.8 million) in the April to June period of 2013, compared to 61 million ($214 million) in the corresponding period of last year, a statement said.

Essilor, the world's biggest maker of corrective eye lenses, on Monday said it has signed a deal to buy US group Transitions Optical and Italian manufacturer Intercast, for $1.73 billion (1.30 billion euros).

Transitions Optical posted sales of $814 million in 2012 and is a specialist in photochromic lenses, which darken automatically when exposed to certain types of light.

Saudi billionaire prince Alwaleed bin Talal has warned global demand for the kingdom's oil is dropping, urging revenue diversification and investment in nuclear and solar energy to cover local consumption.

In letters to officials and published on Sunday on his Twitter account, King Abdullah's nephew warned that it was alarming that "92 percent of the government budget relies on oil".

Loans to businesses in recession-hit Italy dropped by 4.2 percent over the past year, with small companies in particular suffering from difficulties in obtaining credit and unpaid state bills, a new report warned Saturday.

Between May 2012 and May 2013, total bank loans dropped by 41.5 billion euros ($55 billion), or 4.2 percent, small business association Confartigianato said.

The European Commission said Saturday it has reached an "amicable solution" with Beijing over imports of Chinese solar panels, a dispute that had threatened to turn into a full-blown trade war.

"We found an amicable solution in the EU-China solar panels case that will lead to a new market equilibrium at sustainable prices," EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said in a statement.

Twice bailed-out Greece still faces a funding shortfall of some 3.8 billion euros ($5.0 billion) late next year but its troika of international creditors are not overly concerned, a senior EU official said Friday.

"There is a program financing gap of about 3.8 billion to the end of 2014," the European Union source said, adding that in the eyes of the experts involved, this figure was "not enormous."

The Pentagon has informed the U.S. Congress of a possible sale of $2 billion worth of military equipment to Iraq, officials said Friday.

Lawmakers, notified Thursday, have 30 days to raise any objections to the plan, which consists of three contracts.

Greece's international creditors have cleared a 2.5 billion-euro ($3.3 billion) installment of bailout loans following the approval of new austerity measures by authorities in Athens.

European Commission spokesman Simon O'Connor said the decision was made by deputy finance ministers of the 17-country eurozone on Friday, pending some national approval procedures to be concluded Monday.

A years-long court battle in New York could have major implications for the world's financial system as investors seek to recover unpaid debts from Argentina's massive 2001 default.

Global finance officials fear a victory by creditors could make it more difficult to put together an international financial rescue packages like the one that pulled the Greek economy from the brink of collapse in the past few years.