Dutch bank ING posted Wednesday a slight fall in profits for 2018 following a multi-million-euro settlement with Netherlands authorities in a money laundering investigation.

Earnings fell by 4.1 percent to 4.7 billion euros ($5.4 billion) last year despite growth in its client base, the Amsterdam-based lender said in a statement.

The EU's powerful anti-trust sheriff, Margrethe Vestager, is set to veto the merger of the Siemens-Alstom rail businesses on Wednesday, in defiance of France and Germany.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday said the country's largest private lender Isbank, partly owned by the main opposition party, would become a property of the Treasury, causing  the bank's shares to plunge.

The three-way alliance of Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors is planning a deal to work with Google's Waymo to jointly develop self-driving taxis, Japan's Nikkei said Tuesday.

Russia's biggest oil company Rosneft said Tuesday it more than doubled its net income last year, taking advantage of the climbing price of crude despite an unstable market.

The state-controlled company reported a net income of 549 billion rubles ($8.4 billion, 7.3 billion euros) in 2018, up from 222 billion rubles the previous year. Revenues increased by 37 percent year on year to 8.2 trillion rubles.

The World Bank, whose new president is due to be appointed by mid-April, is a global financial organization whose mission is to end extreme poverty by supporting development projects.

The pound dropped Monday following weak UK construction data and as Prime Minister Theresa May seeks to try and finally unlock the Brexit stalemate.

Britain on Monday will seek to reassure foreign investors worried about Britain leaving the EU after Japanese automaker Nissan said it was scrapping a major planned investment less than two months before Brexit.

Turkish inflation slightly surged 1.06 percent in January from December after two months of slowdown, reaching an annual rate of 20.35 percent, driven by higher food prices, official statistics showed Monday.

The highest monthly increase was recorded in food, at 6.43 percent, according to the Turkish statistics office (TUIK).

The board of Japanese car giant Nissan is poised to suggest a replacement for jailed former chairman Carlos Ghosn at a meeting in Tokyo on Tuesday, according to local media.