Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reaped a $3.3 billion gain last year by exercising stock options in the social networking company that he founded in a Harvard University dorm room.

The windfall saddled Zuckerberg with a huge tax bill, even though he limited his Facebook salary to just $1, according to regulatory documents filed Monday.

Japan raised its sales tax Tuesday, moving to stabilize government finances but at the risk of undermining a shaky economic recovery.

It's a gamble the world's No. 3 economy cannot afford to take, given its soaring public debt.

A U.S. aid package to Ukraine that also imposes sanctions on Russia for its Crimea takeover is expected to clear Congress Tuesday and head to President Barack Obama, ending a weeks-long impasse.

But there is already concern that the delayed legislation might be too little too late to have a substantial impact on resolving the most serious East-West confrontation since the end of the Cold War.

Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem said Monday he was confident that Cyprus's bailed out economy will recover in a "short period of time" despite the harsh "haircut" slapped on savings.

The Dutch finance minister was visiting the eurozone member one year after a controversial bailout deal which saw an unprecedented haircut on deposits over 100,000 euros ($138,000) to secure emergency funding to save a bankrupt economy.

Eurozone inflation fell to 0.5 percent in March, official data showed on Monday, the lowest rate since October 2009 at the height of the financial crisis, and amid concerns about the dangers of deflation.

Inflation in the currency bloc has trended steadily lower in recent months, coming in well below the European Central Bank target rate of just under 2.0 percent.

Switzerland said Monday it was investigating a range of banks, including domestic leaders UBS and Credit Suisse along with top global houses, over suspicions they manipulated currency markets.

The probe includes JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland as well as the Zurich cantonal bank ZKB and private banking group Julius Baer, the Competition Commission (COMCO) said in a statement.

Samsung SDI, the world's largest smartphone battery maker, said Monday it would absorb an affiliate producing electronic chemical materials, in the latest restructuring of the giant Samsung Group.

The firm said it would complete the merger with Cheil Industries by July 1 through a stock swap. Both firms are units of Samsung Group, South Korea's largest business conglomerate.

French public deficit and debt in 2013 were higher than previous government estimates, official data showed on Monday, dealing a fresh blow to President Francois Hollande a day after disastrous local polls.

French public deficit stood at 4.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), compared with 4.9 percent the previous year, according to data released by the INSEE statistics agency. Previous government estimates said it would stand at 4.1 percent.

Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama has been elected the new head of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at a summit of the 15-nation regional bloc, his Ivorian predecessor announced on Saturday.

"I am very happy to tell you that yesterday (Friday) my peers... decided to name as head of ECOWAS, my brother and friend John Dramani Mahama, the president of the Republic of Ghana," said Ivory Coast's leader Alassane Ouattara in a speech at the closing of the ECOWAS summit.

The telephone empire of billionaire Carlos Slim and Mexico's dominant broadcaster never see eye to eye, but they now have a common enemy: the government's telecommunications reform plan.

President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration introduced in the Senate this week legislation to implement the constitutional reform that passed in the Congress last year.