EU leaders looked ready on Friday to cut the bloc's budget for the first time in its six-decade history, with a tentative agreement to trim spending by three percent in absolute terms over the rest of the decade, diplomats said.

As marathon talks entered an 18th hour, a sustained push led by British Prime Minister David Cameron for the EU to share in the austerity cuts the 27 member states are implementing won crucial backing from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

British Prime Minister David Cameron warned on Thursday that there would be no EU budget deal without further cuts to proposals made at a summit in November that collapsed in disagreement.

"When we were last here in November, the numbers that were put forward were much too high. They need to come down. And if they don't come down, there won't be a deal," Cameron told reporters at a start of talks in Brussels.

Sixteen stories below Grand Central Terminal, an army of workers is blasting through bedrock to create a new commuter rail concourse with more floor space than New Orleans' Superdome, just one of three audacious projects going on beneath New York City's streets to expand what's already the nation's biggest mass transit system.

But even with blasting and machinery grinding through the rock day and night, most New Yorkers are blithely unaware of the construction or the eerie underworld that includes a massive, eight-story cavern, miles of tunnels and watery, gravel-filled pits.

Spain's factories slashed production for the 16th month in a row in December, official data showed Thursday, as they reacted to a slump in demand from recession-hit consumers.

Output dropped 6.9 percent in the year to December, after smoothing out seasonal blips, following a 7.0-percent plunge in November, a report by the National Statistics Institute showed.

Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse said Thursday its net profit fell 24 percent last year to 1.4 billion Swiss francs (1.2 billion euros, $1.5 billion) despite its investment bank unit rebounding into profit.

The result was below the 1.7 billion francs penciled in by analysts surveyed by the Swiss financial news agency AWP.

EU leaders head into difficult talks on the bloc's 2014-20 budget Thursday under the watchful eye of a newly assertive European parliament hostile to any major spending cuts.

In November, they tried and failed to narrow sharp differences and while most expect a compromise to emerge this time, there is no certainty other than that the budget talks will be long.

The U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday it is seeking at least $5 billion in civil penalties from Standard & Poor's for losses due to inflated ratings of mortgage bonds.

Announcing a suit against S&P and its parent, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Attorney General Eric Holder said the powerful rating agency knowingly exaggerated the ratings on financial securities, misrepresenting their true credit risk.

Hungary's currency the forint fell Wednesday following a report that Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy, seen as something of an economic maverick, is set to take over as governor of the central bank.

On Wednesday morning, the forint traded at 294.16 against the euro compared to 291.77 on Tuesday evening.

Dell's plan to take the computer giant private offers an opportunity to return to its start-up roots, but won't solve the fundamental problems facing the company and the PC sector, analysts say.

The Texas-based tech giant on Tuesday unveiled a $24.4 billion buyout deal giving founder Michael Dell a chance to reshape the former number one PC maker away from the spotlight of Wall Street.

Royal Bank of Scotland on Wednesday said it expected to pay "significant penalties" and face other sanctions from British and U.S. financial regulators over its role in the Libor rate-rigging scandal.

"RBS confirms that it is in late-stage settlement discussions with these authorities," the Edinburgh-based bank said in a statement.