World Bank president Jim Yong Kim denied Friday that his organisation had been pressured by China to remove criticism of the country's financial system from a report.

Early this month the Washington-based institution released its China Economic Update report in Beijing, including a section urging the country to accelerate reform of its state-dominated financial sector. 

Asian markets mostly rose Friday after the European Central Bank boosted emergency aid to Greece and eurozone chiefs agreed a bridging loan to the country, while Hong Kong and Shanghai rallied as fears over a renewed mainland rout eased.

Buying was also given a bump by a record close on Wall Street, where investors were cheered by upbeat earnings, the easing of the Greek crisis and a stabilization of China's markets after a month of plunges.

A Greek parliament vote satisfies the initial terms of a bailout deal between Athens and its EU creditors agreed at a 17-hour summit earlier this week, an EU spokeswoman said Thursday.

"The authorities have legally implemented the first set of four measures agreed at the eurosummit in a timely and overall satisfactory manner," spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt told reporters.

Famed toy emporium FAO Schwarz, a household name for its aisles crammed with games and pricey playthings, shuttered its doors on Wednesday, a casualty of New York's skyrocketing real estate prices.

Thousands of nostalgic New Yorkers and tourists hurried to make a final purchase at the Fifth Avenue store immortalized in films such as 1988's "Big," when Tom Hanks famously played a piano on its floor with his feet.

Tokyo stocks rose 0.67 percent Thursday after Greek MPs passed unpopular reforms crucial to keeping the country in the eurozone, while the dollar picked up against the yen after Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen reaffirmed a U.S. interest rate hike by year-end.

The Nikkei 225 index at the Tokyo Stock Exchange rose 136.79 points to close at 20,600.12, while the Topix index of all first-section shares climbed 0.88 percent, or 14.42 points, to 1,660.83.

Europe's main stock markets advanced at the start of trading on Thursday after Greek MPs voted in favour of an austerity-laden bailout package.

In opening trade, London's benchmark FTSE 100 index rose 0.28 percent to 6,772.75 points, Frankfurt's DAX 30 added 0.73 percent to 11,624.48 and the CAC 40 in Paris won 0.49 percent to open at 5,071.90 points compared with Wednesday's close.

Anti-austerity protesters hurled petrol bombs at police in front of Greece's parliament on Wednesday as lawmakers began debating deeply unpopular reforms needed to unlock a new eurozone bailout.

Riot police responded with tear gas against dozens of hooded protesters who set ablaze parts of Syntagma square in central Athens as they targeted the officers, AFP journalists saw.

French MPs overwhelmingly backed the new Greek bailout agreement on Wednesday, with Prime Minister Manuel Valls saying it was the only route out of the crisis. 

The French lower house National Assembly backed the agreement by 412 votes to 69, shortly followed by the upper house Senate, which supported the bill by 260 votes to 23.

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Wednesday he will submit the eurozone deal on Greece's debts to parliament to ensure support for his country's multi-billion-euro contribution.

"Although this procedure is not obligatory in our country, it is my intention to bring the deal before parliament to be debated, because it is a big sum that Spanish taxpayers are being asked to guarantee," Rajoy told the lower house.

Greece on Wednesday geared up for a parliamentary vote on draconian reforms demanded by eurozone creditors in exchange for a huge new bailout, just hours after a bombshell report from the International Monetary Fund criticized the deal.

The outcome of the crucial vote was far from clear after the IMF issued a stark warning that Greece would need far more debt relief to stop it crashing out of the common currency than European governments have so far been willing to contemplate.