Even before Alibaba went online, its founder talked about making the fledgling e-commerce company a global player.

At Alibaba Group's first staff meeting in 1999, a video shot by an employee shows Jack Ma rallying a workforce of 17 of his friends. They met in a cement-floored apartment in Hangzhou, a city southwest of Shanghai, at a time when few Chinese were online. Ma was an English teacher with no training in business or computers.

China's annual inflation fell sharply in April to its lowest level in 18 months, official data showed Friday, raising concerns about the risk of deflation in the world's second-largest economy.

The consumer price index -- a main gauge of inflation -- went up by 1.8 percent year-on-year last month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement, down from a rise of 2.4 percent in March.

The dollar was delicately balanced in Asia on Friday as investors braced for disputed local independence referendums in Ukraine that could further ramp up global tension and undermine optimism, analysts said.

While traders were largely holding their breath for events on the ground, a slight rebound in Japanese shares on Friday was providing some temporary support for the greenback.

UAE telecom giant Etisalat said Thursday it expects to complete its purchase of Vivendi's 53 percent stake in Maroc Telecom, Morocco's main provider, on May 14.

French media and entertainment group Vivendi in November announced it had agreed to sell its Maroc Telecom stake to Etisalat for 4.2 billion euros.

Barclays on Thursday said it would axe 7,000 jobs at its struggling investment bank unit and sell or run down about £115 billion of non-core assets, in a major strategic shake-up.

The bank, which was at the heart of the Libor interest-rate rigging scandal, also said the overall number of job cuts planned for this year had risen to 14,000. 

Emirates airlines, the largest Middle East carrier, said Thursday it posted a 43 percent surge in profit to $887 million last year as fuel costs dropped and passenger numbers rose.

Net profit in 2013 hit 3.3 billion dirhams ($887 million) compared to 2.3 billion dirhams ($622 million) the previous year, the company announced.

China's biggest bank ICBC has banned activities related to trading in Bitcoin, it said Thursday, joining at least 10 other Chinese banks participating in a government crackdown on virtual currencies.

Bitcoin, invented in the wake of the global financial crisis by a mysterious computer guru, is a form of cryptography-based e-money that can be stored either virtually or on a user's hard drive, and offers a largely anonymous payment system.

Ex-army chief and leading presidential candidate Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warned Egyptians on Tuesday they will have to be patient and work hard to salvage their economy after three years of unrest.

The retired field marshal, who ousted the elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July, said foreign debt and subsidies costs ate away much of the budget, but ruled out drastic subsidy cuts.

Japanese videogame giant Nintendo said Wednesday it logged a $229 million loss for its fiscal year to March as sales of its Wii U console disappointed.

The company said its net loss came in at 23.2 billion yen ($229 million) -- reversing a net profit of 7.1 billion yen a year ago -- on sales of 571.7 billion yen, which were down 10.0 percent on the year.

A delegation from the troika of international lenders Tuesday began its fourth assessment of Cyprus's economy and troubled banking system to see whether Nicosia is meeting its obligations under the bailout.

Cyprus has completed three similar reviews by the troika, which is made up of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.