Samsung Electronics is the world's largest smartphone manufacturer and biggest user of Google's Android operating system. And, for some, that's the problem. Samsung's meteoric rise – in the first quarter of 2011 it shipped fewer smartphones than Apple, Nokia or Research in Motion, but is now market leader – has handed it a dilemma. Does
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Russia is ending its long love affair with a car that was once prized by the nation but has come to symbolise the decline of its automobile industry and, for some, the country itself. The decision by state car maker AvtoVAZ to halt production of the last models in the Lada Classic series this year
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The European Central Bank will resist pressure to do more to fight the euro zone crisis when it meets in Barcelona on Thursday, holding fire despite calls to restart its bond-buying programme to help austerity-hit Spain. Financial markets are clamouring for the ECB to step up its efforts to fight the two-year crisis by buying
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Britain's George Osborne accused fellow EU finance ministers of trying to water down Europe's bank capital rules and said this would make him "look like an idiot", as talks about a law to stop another financial crisis unravelled in Brussels. In remarks at the negotiating table, Osborne, who says he wants much tougher controls to
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Britain's No.4 grocer Wm Morrison Supermarkets posted a fall in underlying sales in its first quarter, reflecting a tough comparison with a bumper period of trading last year and customers switching to rivals who are promoting more heavily. Morrisons, which trails market leader Tesco, Wal-Mart's Asda and J Sainsbury in UK market share, said on
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Edvard Munch's masterpiece "The Scream," one of the world's most recognizable works of art, fetched a record $120 mln at Sotheby's on Wednesday, becoming the most expensive piece of art ever sold at auction. Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern art auction featured top works by Picasso, Dali and Miro, but Munch's vibrant work from 1895 was
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Asian shares slipped on Thursday and the euro languished near a two-week low after disappointing economic data from both sides of the Atlantic rekindled concerns about the strength of global growth. Commodities and the Australian dollar – all sensitive to growth expectations – also struggled as the data put investors on the defensive and limited
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The only regret that outgoing central bank chief Athanasios Orphanides had during his five year term that ended Wednesday was that he could not convince the president of Cyprus and his advisors of the worsening economic situation from 2008 to 2011 and the need for corrective fiscal measures. Speaking during a press briefing to present
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Standard & Poor's raised Greece's credit rating out of default territory on Wednesday, as expected after Athens slashed its debt by about a third by completing the biggest sovereign debt restructuring in financial history. But the firm kept Greece firmly in the junk category with a CCC rating and warned that a deep recession, unpredictable
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* Rates up in Cyprus, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain; Falls in Austria, Ireland, Slovakia, Slovenia * Unemployment in the euro zone rose to a 15-year high of 10.9% in March, driven by lay-offs in Italy and Spain, and economists said worse was to come as the impact of the debt crisis extracts an ever greater
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