Samsung said Friday it had reached a deal to buy a U.S. home automation startup SmartThings, as the South Korean electronics giant aims to expand beyond the increasingly saturated smartphone market.

The world's top smartphone maker said it had entered into a deal to buy the U.S. app maker, which allows people to monitor and control their home appliances via mobile devices. 

The dollar held steady in Asia Friday on easing concerns over the situation in Ukraine as Russian President Vladimir Putin called for an end to the crisis in the violence-wracked country.

In Tokyo afternoon trading, the greenback fetched 102.53 yen, up from 102.45 yen in New York.

Standard & Poor's has cut the credit ratings of three major Austrian banks in response to new legislation winding up the deeply troubled and nationalized lender Hypo Alde Adria.

The ratings were cut by one notch for Erste Group, Raiffeisen Zentralbank and UniCredit of Italy's local unit Bank Austria, S&P said late on Wednesday. The outlook for the ratings is negative.

U.S. sanctions against Moscow appeared Thursday to have claimed their first major victim when the head of Russia's largest oil company was reported to have asked the government for help to cover its massive debt.

The well-connected Vedomosti business daily said Rosneft chief Igor Sechin had written a letter to the cabinet outlining five ways it could help repay nearly $45 billion (34 billion euros). More than half the amount comes due by the end of next year.

Gold consumption fell by an annualized 16 percent in the second quarter of 2014 as Chinese and Indian buyers cut back on record purchases a year earlier, sector data showed Thursday.

A director of the World Gold Council (WGC) forecast the full-year result would also be lower than in 2013, but probably not represent as big a drop as during the three months from April through June.

The French economy ground to a standstill in the second quarter of the year, official figures published Thursday showed, further fanning fears that France could drag down a stuttering eurozone recovery.

France's gross domestic product was flat in the second three months of the year, according to national statistics office INSEE, following zero growth in the first quarter.

Spain reported Wednesday the steepest slide in consumer prices in nearly five years, a potentially worrying development as the eurozone fends off the threat of a deflationary spiral.

With Spaniards cautious about spending in an economy suffering a 24-percent unemployment rate, consumer prices dropped a sharper-than-expected 0.4 percent in the year to July, Spain's National Statistics Institute said.

Industrial production in the eurozone fell by 0.3 percent in June, official data showed on Wednesday, dragged lower by a drop in the output of consumer goods and energy.

The result was significantly below analyst expectations, and the news -- the latest sign that recovery of the eurozone economy is faltering -- pushed down the euro against the dollar.

French prices dropped sharply in July compared to the previous month, official data published on Wednesday showed, adding to fears of deflation in France and the wider eurozone.

Prices fell by 0.3 percent month-on-month in July, the INSEE national statistics office said in a statement.

The Japanese economy shrank at an annual pace of 6.8 percent in the second quarter after spending got slammed by a sales tax hike that kicked in from April, government figures showed Wednesday.

Japan's gross domestic product, or the total output of goods and services, also contracted 1.7 percent during the April-June period from the previous quarter.