It took patience and nerves of steel, but investors in U.S. markets who held their positions through rocky December got their reward in the new year's opening week.

A long-awaited political deal to head of the fiscal cliff finalized on the Tuesday New Year's Day holiday sparked a huge rally that delivered the S&P 500 to its highest level in five years with a near 4.6 percent gain for the week.

Entertainment retailer Virgin, which employs 1,000 workers in France, is to declare itself insolvent, a management spokesman said on Friday.

The company, which has struggled to maintain sales of CDs and DVDs in the face of increasing digital distribution of music and films, is to hold a works council meeting with employees on Monday to announce the insolvency, the spokesman said.

Inflation in the 17-member eurozone was stable at 2.2 percent in December, official data confirmed on Friday, as the slowing economy took pressure off prices.

The Eurostat data agency noted that energy costs rose by 5.2 percent in December, slower than the 5.7 percent reported in November.

The German government is eyeing 5.0-6.0 billion euros ($6.5-7.8 billion) in additional spending cuts in 2014 in a bid to balance the government budget, a newspaper reported on Friday.

The regional daily Rheinische Post quoted the deputy chief of the conservative CDU party, Michael Meister, as saying: "If we want to reach the so-called structural zero in 2014, we must close a gap of around 5.0 billion euros.

Retail sales in Germany rose more than expected in November, partially making up for the drop seen the previous month, official data showed on Friday.

Retail sales rose by 1.2 percent in November compared with October in price, seasonally and calendar-adjusted terms, according to provisional figures by the federal statistics office Destatis.

Apple and Google extended their dominance in the U.S smartphone market as 2012 neared its close, industry tracker comScore said on Thursday.

The share of smartphone service subscribers relying on Google's Android software inched up to 53.7 percent in the three months leading up to December, while Apple's portion grew to 35 percent from 34.3 percent, comScore reported.

Spain's right-leaning government hailed a rare glimmer of economic hope Thursday when figures showed the jobless queue shrank in December, but unemployment was still up dramatically over the year.

Millions of jobs have been destroyed in Spain since a property market crash and a global financial crisis rocked the economy in 2008.

Bank lending to private households in the eurozone contracted again in November as the region's debt crisis continues to dampen demand for credit, data showed on Thursday.

Eurozone bank loans to the private sector shrank by 0.8 percent in November from the level in the same month in 2011 after already shrinking by 0.8 percent in October, the European Central Bank said in a statement.

Turkey signed on Thursday an agreement with the United Arab Emirates for the development of coal fields in southern Turkey to generate electricity.

The agreement between Abu Dhabi-based TAQA and Turkey's state-run power company EUAS marks the biggest Arab investment in the Turkish energy sector, a senior energy ministry official told AFP.

The pan-Arab news giant Al-Jazeera bought Current TV, a struggling U.S. cable channel, Wednesday in a deal aimed at giving the Qatar-based broadcaster the scope to challenge major American TV networks.

Current, co-founded by former U.S. vice president Al Gore, announced the sale in a statement that was later confirmed by Al-Jazeera. The acquisition will allow the latter to reach millions more U.S. homes than it does at present.