European markets ended a volatile day to the downside on Friday, as markets saw US economy lose jobs last month for the first time in over two years -- a decline that was still less than many had feared.
The German DAX 30 closed down 0.2 percent at 5,007, while the French CAC-40 index also shed 0.2 percent to 4,528. The UK's FTSE 100 finished down 0.2 percent at 5,362.
Shares swung as investors sorted out the US jobs figures. Reeling from two hurricanes, nonfarm payrolls fell by an estimated 35,000 in September -- but much less than the 150,000 economists expected.
US stocks traded modestly higher on the data, which showed the resilience of the economy after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but fed fears that interest rates will need to rise further to contain inflation.
Both the US and European markets have sustained losses over the past few days, mostly because of inflation worries and fears for the course of interest rates.
M&A news stole the spotlight as British oil giant BP said it will sell Innovene, its petrochemical subsidiary, to UK-based Ineos for US$9 billion in cash. Shares closed up 0.2 percent in London.
Support also came from Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Reckitt Benckiser. It added 1.9 percent in London after agreeing to buy the over-the-counter medicines business of health and beauty retailer Boots PLC.
Boots shares added 1.9 percent after it signed the cash deal valued at £1.9 billion (US$3.42 billion) and said it plans to return £1.43 billion to shareholders in the form of a special dividend.
"Reckitts' are paying a top whack for Boots Healthcare International after Bayer, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline backed off," said analysts at Dryden Wealth Management.
British supermarket J Sainsbury rose 1.3 percent after reporting a 4.1 percent increase in second-quarter comparable sales, or by 2.8 percent excluding fuel. Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein upgraded the company to hold from reduce.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts