A Vietnamese court on Monday sentenced a disgraced banking tycoon to 30 years in jail over a multi-million dollar scandal that shocked the nation's already fragile financial markets.

Nguyen Duc Kien, 50, was found guilty of fraud, tax evasion, illegal trade and "deliberate wrongdoing causing serious consequences", according to the verdict read at the Hanoi People's Court.

Saudi Arabia is preparing to launch its first sovereign wealth fund to manage budget surpluses from a rise in crude prices estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars, state media reported Saturday.

The central bank has managed investment of the kingdom's foreign currency reserves until now, much of it in U.S. Treasury bonds.

The dollar rallied slightly against the euro and other major currencies Friday after a solid May US jobs report pointed to growth in the world's largest economy.

US employers created more than 200,000 jobs for the fourth straight month in May, the Labor Department said. A net 217,000 positions were added, nearly all by the private sector.

Zambia is seeking help from the International Monetary Fund, after its currency kwacha lost about a fifth of its value and prices of its key export commodity copper slumped, the Fund said Friday.

The "recent steep depreciation of the kwacha is raising inflationary pressures and expansionary fiscal policy has created large budgetary imbalances," said the fund in a statement, after a visit by a team of its experts to the country.

Standard & Poor's on Friday revised up Ireland's sovereign credit rating to 'A-' with a positive outlook from its previous 'BBB+' assessment, citing the eurozone member's improved domestic prospects.

In contrast, the ratings agency held Italy's credit rating at 'BBB', which is two notches above junk level, and maintained its negative outlook.

The U.S. economy has finally regained the jobs lost to the Great Recession. But go easy on the hallelujahs. The comeback is far from complete.

Friday's report from the government revealed an economy healing yet marked by deep and lasting scars. The downturn that began 6½ years ago accelerated wrenching changes that have left many Americans feeling worse off than they did the last time the economy had roughly the same number of jobs it does now.

Cypriot GDP contracted by 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2014, a slight improvement on the 0.8 percent drop in the previous three months, the latest official estimate showed on Friday.

The figure is the same as given in a flash estimate by the state statistical service on May 15.

The euro strengthened against the dollar Thursday in choppy trade after investors weighed the European Central Bank's moves to bolster fragile eurozone growth and prevent deflation.

The euro tumbled to $1.35 after the ECB cut its key interest rates to new all-time lows and announced other aggressive measures.

Central banks can't fix everything.

The European Central Bank took bold steps Thursday to protect Europe's fragile economic recovery, cutting interest rates and offering to pump more money into the financial system.

China's economy will moderate over the next few years as Beijing looks to rebalance it, the World Bank said Friday, but it warned of risks from local government debt, a cooling real estate sector and an uncertain export recovery.

The bank's Economic Update on China comes amid fears the Asian giant and driver of global growth is slowing too much, as the leadership looks to pivot towards private, domestic demand from a reliance on big-ticket government investment projects.