The World Bank sharply cut its outlook for war-torn Ukraine Wednesday, forecasting its economy will shrink by a massive 7.5 percent this year due to the conflict with pro-Russian separatists.

The international lender lowered its 2015 economic outlook from its previous estimate of a 2.3 percent contraction.

British bank Barclays said Wednesday that first-quarter profits halved after taking another £800 million ($1.2 billion, 1.1 billion euros) provision mostly for costs over its alleged role in foreign exchange market rigging.

Net profit or earnings after taxation sank 52 percent to £465 million in the three months to the end of March compared with a year earlier, Barclays said in a results statement.

The dollar softened in Asia Wednesday on expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will delay an interest rate hike following fresh data pointing to slowing growth in the world's biggest economy, analysts said. 

The greenback fell to 118.83 yen in afternoon trade from 118.88 yen in New York, while it is sharply down from the 119.10 yen earlier Tuesday in Asia.

President Nicolas Maduro said Tuesday he will announce economic reform measures this week, as Venezuela grapples with severe inflation, shortages and other woes.

The heir to the late leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez said he wanted to "win the economic war along the path of socialism".

A new Greek expert team, tasked with negotiating with the country's creditors, met Tuesday to draw up a series of reforms aimed at finally reaching a deal with the EU and the IMF.

The "political negotiation team" of experts, led by the Dutch-born economics professor and junior foreign minister Euclid Tsakalotos, met late in the evening "to devise reform proposals," the finance ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine is pleading for cash to rebuild an economy battered by a year of war, but drawing investors to a country where shells are still booming is a struggle.

Kiev is frustrated that Western officials are ordering it to speed up economic reforms but refusing to send peacekeepers to stabilize a conflict it blames on Russia.

Britain's economy grew far slower than expected in the first quarter of 2015, official data showed Tuesday, delivering a blow to the government just nine days before a general election.

Gross domestic product expanded by 0.3 percent between January and March compared with GDP growth of 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014, the Office for National Statistics said in a statement. Analysts' consensus had been for a slowdown to only 0.5 percent in the first quarter, according to Bloomberg News.

BP says first-quarter profit fell 26 percent in the wake of the sharp drop in oil prices.

The company says Tuesday that net income for the quarter was $2.6 billion, compared with $3.5 billion in the same period last year.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday said he was confident that tough negotiations with his country's EU-IMF creditors would reach a deal by early May.

"Our goal... is to reach a first agreement this week if possible, or next week at the latest," Tsipras said in a late night interview with Greece's Star TV.

China is considering merging scores of its biggest state-owned enterprises to create around 40 national champions from the existing 112, the official Xinhua news agency said Monday.

The report said state firms would be merged or acquired, but gave no timelines or details about which companies would merge.