HSBC announced Monday that net profit fell 3.8 percent in the three months to June, as the company agreed to sell its Brazilian business for $5.2 billion to Brazil's Banco Bradesco.

Europe's biggest bank announced in June that it would cut its global workforce by up to 50,000 as it exits Brazil and Turkey.

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said in an interview Sunday that his German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble was "wrong" to propose a temporary withdrawal from the euro for debt-laden Greece, evoking "a clear disagreement."

"I think Mr. Schaeuble is wrong and even contradicting his own deep European commitment," the French minister said in the interview to be published Monday in the German business daily Handelsblatt, excerpts of which were broadcast Sunday.

Spain could become like Greece if the same austerity policies are imposed on the country, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said in an interview published Sunday.

"Spaniards need to look at their own economic and social situation and based on that evaluate what their country needs, independently of what happens in Greece or wherever," he told center-left daily El Pais.

Greece had a contingency plan in the event of being forced by creditors into a disorderly default, which included nationalizations and a corruption probe targeting German companies, a Greek newspaper reported Saturday.

Efimerida Ton Syntakton daily said the plan -- alluded to by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in parliament on Friday -- was designed "to raise the cost of rupture" for Greece's creditors.

The International Monetary Fund approved Friday the next installment of its massive loan to Ukraine despite uncertainty about the sustainability of the country's debt and its conflict with separatist forces.

The IMF executive board, which represents 188 member nations, gave a green light to the immediate disbursement of $1.7 billion, part of a support program awarded in March that has caused internal strains in the Washington-based institution.

The head of the failed Japan-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox was arrested in Tokyo on Saturday on suspicion of inflating his cash account by $1 million, authorities said.

Mark Karpeles, 30, is suspected of accessing the exchange's computer system in February 2013 and inflating his account, Japanese police said. If found guilty, the France-born Karpeles could face up to five years in prison, or a fine of up to 500,000 yen ($4,000).

Senior EU-IMF auditors on Friday held their first meetings with Greek ministers to finalize a new three-year bailout as the Athens stock market prepares to reopen after being shut down for over a month by the debt crisis.

Greece's main stock exchange in Athens will resume operations, which were halted on June 26 as the crisis-hit government imposed capital controls, on Monday, a finance ministry source told Agence France Presse.

Tens of thousands of working mothers have been sacked in Iran since the start of 2014 because employers found cheaper staff, an official said Friday, warning that a new maternity pay policy remains unfunded.

The comments highlight the financial pressures on families and on the Iranian government, despite this month's nuclear deal with world powers that could pave the way for an economic rebound.

Cash-trapped Ukraine moved a step closer Friday to avoiding a devastating default thanks to a new offer that would see its creditors accept a small debt write-off.

The proposal that sources said was submitted by Franklin Templeton and three other U.S. financial titans to Kiev this week is still far short of the bond value reduction sought by the war-torn former Soviet state.

Super tall, super skinny and super expensive: a new generation of New York skyscrapers, some taller than the Empire State building, are altering the world's most famous skyline.

And it's not just the masonry that's soaring to new heights. The prices have also gone stratospheric: three apartments sold recently for more than $100 million a piece.