Asian markets have fallen sharply for the second successive night after the giant Japanese financial services firm, Nomura Holdings, reported disappointing earnings figures and oil slipped below the $30 per barrel level again.

The more than 3% fall on Tokyo’s Nikkei Index last night wiped out all the gains made late last week following the surprise move by the Bank of Japan to introduce negative interest rates in an attempt to boost inflation and economic activity there.

The Asian downturn follows further downturns on Western markets yesterday driven by sharp falls in profitability by oil majors BP and Exxon.

BP, which announced annual losses of $5.2bn said it would cut another 3,000 jobs in its downstream oil refining and marketing divisions on top of 4,000 redundancies announced last year.

Internet giant Yahoo has also announced it's cutting roughly 1,600 jobs from its global workforce after results showing the search engine lost over $4bn in the last quarter of 2015.

It's not clear if any of the company's Irish workforce will be affected. Yahoo says it's launching "an aggressive strategic plan to simplify the company."

This has increased speculation it may be sold or merged with another company.