Greece's central bank on Sunday said the country's main four lenders would be recapitalized separately, a move that put on hold a planned merger between two of them.

"The Bank of Greece confirms that the recapitalization process for the four systemic banks (National Bank, Alpha, Eurobank, Piraeus) is proceeding normally and will conclude in April in any case," the central bank said.

Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho called for severe cuts in public spending after a court rejected a number of austerity measures, as the EU warned the debt-hit nation to respect the aims of its international bailout.

In an address to the nation Sunday, Coelho said there would be no new tax hikes in 2013 but that measures would be taken to "contain public spending in the areas of social security, health and education".

A ban on "rip-off" surcharges imposed on credit card spending came into force in Britain on Saturday, meaning traders must ensure that the extra fees reflect genuine processing costs.

The ban on excessive charges for paying for goods and services such as flights and entertainment tickets by credit or debit card was welcomed by campaigners.

Turkey's energy minister has criticized the United States not joining in the $22 billion tender to build the country's second nuclear power plant, local media reported on Saturday.

"If we are not building the nuclear power plant with America, which strategic project will we handle with them?" Energy Minister Taner Yildiz was quoted as telling the daily Hurriyet newspaper.

President Barack Obama will make key concessions to Republican foes next week when he unveils his U.S. budget that proposes cuts to cherished entitlement programs, the White House said Friday.

Obama's fiscal blueprint slashes the deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, in what a senior administration official described as a "compromise offer" that cuts federal spending, finds savings in Social Security and raises tax revenue from the wealthy.

Greece's finance minister met on Thursday with EU-IMF auditors who have resumed an audit in Athens that was interrupted last month, and said details would be available once a comprehensive agreement had been reached.

"Nothing will be sealed until everything is sealed," Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said after speaking with representatives from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, a group of creditors known as the troika.

Millions of emails and leaked records from offshore tax havens have exposed the identities of thousands of holders of offshore accounts, including the family of the president of Azerbaijan and French President Francois Hollande's one-time campaign treasurer, the Guardian and Le Monde newspapers reported on Thursday.

The alleged involvement of Jean-Jacques Augier adds to the pressure on Hollande, who is already on the defensive after his former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac was charged in a tax fraud probe.

Former bosses at British bank HBOS were slammed on Friday for a "colossal failure" of management, pursuing a high-risk strategy that sparked its downfall at the height of the global financial crisis, lawmakers said in a key report.

The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards attacked the state-rescued group's ex-chairman Lord Dennis Stevenson and previous chief executives James Crosby and Andy Hornby in a hard-hitting review into the bank's collapse.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics said Friday it expected a sharp increase in first-quarter operating profit to 8.7 trillion won ($7.7 billion), up 52.9 percent from the first three months of 2012.

Samsung, the world's largest technology firm by revenue, was giving earnings guidance before official results are made available later this month.

Japan is making a sweeping shift in its monetary policy, aiming to spur inflation and get the world's third-largest economy out of a long, debilitating slump.

Bowing to demands from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for more aggressive monetary easing, the Bank of Japan announced Thursday a policy overhaul intended to double the money supply and achieve a 2 percent inflation target at the "earliest possible time, with a time horizon of about two years."