Ratings agency Standard and Poor's on Thursday downgraded Italian automaker Fiat's long-term corporate credit rating from BB to BB-, citing weak demand in Italy and overcapacity in Europe.

The announcement came after the Italian auto giant said its net profit in the first quarter soared ten-fold to 379 million euros ($500 million) thanks to its U.S. partner Chrysler, without which it would be in the red.

HSBC on Thursday said it would cut 3,167 jobs as part of previously announced plans to reduce the bank's global workforce by 30,000 over two years to 2013.

The London-headquartered bank added that due to the creation of 950 positions, the net loss for British jobs would total 2,217.

Volkswagen, Europe's biggest car maker, said Thursday that profits raced ahead in the first three months of this year, driven by strong demand worldwide for all of its brands.

VW said in a statement it booked net profit of 3.186 billion euros ($4.222 billion) in the period from January to March, an increase of 86 percent from a year earlier.

Han Zhongping, a 38-year-old coal mine owner who has four luxury cars and is in the market for another, looked at BMW's latest sedans at this week's Beijing auto show and said what he wants is simple.

"The most expensive is the best," said Han, from the northwestern town of Yulin in China's coal fields. His stable of cars already includes models from BMW and Mercedes-Benz, all bought for cash.

The chief executive of Amobee, the U.S. mobile advertising start-up recently acquired by Singapore Telecom (SingTel), said Wednesday the company is set to aggressively expand its Asian operations.

Trevor Healy told reporters in Singapore the California-based company will ride on SingTel's more than 400 million mobile subscriber base across Asia to boost its business.

Britain's economy sank back into recession in the first quarter, when it contracted by 0.2 percent amid ongoing state austerity and the eurozone debt crisis, official data showed on Wednesday.

The British economy has now returned to a technical recession, defined as two successive quarters of contraction, after shrinking by 0.3 percent in the previous three months, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed.

Brazil will invest $17 billion on public transport for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, President Dilma Rousseff announced Tuesday.

She said in a speech that the federal government, states and cities would earmark a total of 32 billion reals ($17 billion) for streetcars, subways and bus stations but gave no timetable for completion.

German engineering and technology giant Siemens warned Wednesday that full-year profits would fall short of original targets following a difficult second quarter.

"Challenges, mostly in our power transmission business, impact the level of income from continuing operations we originally expected to achieve in fiscal 2012 -- 6.0 billion euros ($7.9 billion) -- by an estimated 600-800 million euros," Siemens said in a statement.

Canada-based mining firm Nautilus Minerals said Tuesday it had signed China's Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group as the first customer of its pioneering Papua New Guinean sea-floor mine.

Nautilus, which is listed on the Canadian and London stock exchanges and has offices in Australia, said Tongling had agreed to buy 1.1 million tons of sulphides per annum from its Solwara 1 undersea mine for three years.

Iraq will reopen this week the Baghdad to Mumbai air route after a hiatus of more than 21 years, as a growing number of Iraqis are travelling to India, officials said on Tuesday.

"Iraqi Airways will open on Friday the route between Baghdad and Mumbai after more than 21 years of interruption," Akram Louaybi, the flag carrier's spokesman, told Agence France Presse.