A logo of Fraser and Neave Limited at its office building in Singapore. Thailand's third-richest man has raised his stake and takeover offer for Fraser and Neave Ltd to fend off a bid by a group led by Indonesian tycoon Stephen Riady as the battle for this conglomerate that deals with food and beverages, brewing, property and publishing draws towards a close.

A view of the Overseas Union Enterprise logo on its office building in Singapore. Shares of Fraser and Neave Ltd rose 1.8 percent to a record today after Thailand's third richest man, Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, raised his takeover offer. This puts the pressure on a consortium led by Stephen Riady's Singapore-listed property company OUE to counter the new offer or to withdraw from Southeast Asia's largest ever corporate acquisition.

The logos of JGC Corp are seen at its headquarters in Yokohama, south of Tokyo. The Algerian crisis has put a spotlight on JGC Corp and its shares as the hostage death toll from a four-day siege at an Algerian gas plant deep in the Sahara has risen to almost 60, with at least nine Japanese nationals also reported killed in an attack claimed by a veteran Islamist fighter on behalf of al Qaeda. Japanese engineering firm JGC is one of the foreign companies operating in the plant which is close to the Libyan border.

A logo of Huawei Company outside the entrance of a Huawei office in Wuhan, Hubei province. Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world's number two telecom equipment maker, bounced back from a disappointing 2011 with a 33 per cent rise in net profit for 2012, and forecasted stronger revenue growth, buoyed by Smartphone sales and cloud computing.

The CAT logo is seen near the exhaust of a Caterpillar CP433E compactor at Holt Caterpillar, the largest Caterpillar dealer in the United States, in San Antonio, Texas. Caterpillar Inc uncovered “deliberate, multi-year, coordinated accounting misconduct” at a subsidiary of a Chinese company it acquired last summer, leading it to write off most of the value of the deal and wiping out more than half of its expected earnings for the fourth quarter of 2012.

A logo of Gucci at Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district in Hong Kong. China's fashion forward men are snapping up Gucci and Burberry bags, driving a luxury market rebound just months after a Chinese sales slowdown spooked global investors. Men account for about 55 per cent of China's luxury goods market, well above the global average of 40 per cent. According to research from brokerage CLSA, this is partly because businessmen often buy expensive gifts to win over government officials or potential associates.

A logo of Dior on a billboard outside a shopping mall in Wuhan, Hubei province. China's statistics chief declared last Friday that there was an urgent need for reforms to narrow the income gap between rich and poor, directly addressing this issue that officialdom has ducked for years.

An ‘Idle No More' logo is seen pinned to the back of a demonstrator's coat as a group of Native Americans and enthusiasts demonstrate in support of the First Nations Canadian movement in downtown Detroit, Michigan. They petitioned for the government to ‘stop putting the interests of the tar sands industry and other environmentally destructive companies above the rights of its First Nations’.