South Korean companies will be penalised if they yield to pressure from North Korea to raise the salaries of workers in their joint Kaesong joint industrial complex, Seoul officials said Tuesday.

Seoul has been seeking talks for several weeks since Pyongyang announced it planned to unilaterally raise the basic salary of the 53,000 North Korean workers employed across more than 100 South Korean firms operating in Kaesong.

China's consumer inflation rebounded in February from a more-than-five-year low, official data showed Tuesday, but a plunge in factory gate prices added to persistent concerns about deflation in the world's second-largest economy.

The 1.4 percent increase in the consumer price index (CPI) compared with a gain of 0.8 percent in January, according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) figures.

Credit Suisse announced on Tuesday that Tidjane Thiam, currently chief of UK-based insurer Prudential, will take over as chief executive from Brady Dougan who will step down at the end of June.

During his eight-year term Dougan steered the bank through the financial crisis and through a tax evasion probe by the U.S. Justice Department that eventually saw the Swiss banking giant slapped with a $2.8 billion fine.

Saudi Arabia on Monday vowed "zero tolerance" against the illegal employment of migrants, more than a year after tens of thousands of foreigners were deported in an earlier crackdown.

The labor and interior ministries "confirm that the inspection campaigns aim to track violators of labor and residency," the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.

Greece faced deepening skepticism ahead of talks on Monday on its plans for reforms to secure a financial lifeline as Athens warned of a possible referendum if its proposals are rejected.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said "there could be problems" if his colleagues from the 19-country eurozone do not accept the list that he is due to present at the Eurogroup meeting in Brussels.

Oil prices fell in Asia Monday, pressed by a stronger U.S. dollar and ongoing concern about swelling U.S. inventories that are adding to a global supply glut, analysts said. 

U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) dipped 11 cents to $49.50 a barrel while Brent shed 33 cents to $59.40 in afternoon trade. 

A drop in German exports caused the country's trade surplus to contract in January, official data showed on Monday.

Exports declined by 2.1 percent in January, driving down the trade surplus, the balance between imports and exports, the federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement.

The European Central Bank on Monday is set to begin its long-awaited 1.1 trillion euro ($1.2 trillion) quantitative easing program to stimulate growth and ward off deflation across the eurozone.

The program calls for the eurozone central bank to buy around 60 billion euros of public and private bonds each month -- a policy it will apply until at least September 2016.

The impact of the deadly Ebola virus fell mainly on three African countries but tourism has taken a hit across the continent of more than 50 nations as fear has kept many visitors away, tourism chiefs say.

Some 56 million tourists visited Africa in 2014, a two-percent rise from the previous year, according to UNWTO figures, but growth in Africa lagged behind that in Europe, Asia or the Americas.

France will commit 8.0 billion euros ($8.7 billion) as part of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's plan to boost economic growth, President Francois Hollande said on Friday.

"To create an effect of leverage, the Juncker plan must attract other contributions -- public contributions and private contributions -- and I have announced that France, through the Caisse des depots and the Public Investment Bank, will put in eight billion euros," Hollande said on a visit to Luxembourg.