Europe's main stock markets ended the week on a mixed note, with London trading weighed down by disappointing domestic corporate news, dealers said.
The FTSE 100 slid 0.26 percent to 6,308 points while in Paris the CAC 40 was essentially unchanged at 5,634.16 points.
Frankfurt's DAX 30 index of leading shares added 0.29 percent to 6,917.03 points, helped by a jump in the share price of Commerzbank.
The DJ Euro STOXX 50 index of eurozone blue-chip shares was flat at 4,181.03 points, while the euro stood at 1.3373 dollars.
In London stock trading, the share price of life insurer Resolution led the blue-chip casualties, tumbling 4.17 percent to £6.2050 after the group said talks with various parties over its possible sale had been terminated.
Resolution said it would continue to assess possible acquisitions and business combinations that would not constitute an offer for the company.
Vodafone shares gave up 4.31 percent to £1.3550 after the telecommunications operator warned that conditions in the British domestic market were deteriorating rapidly.
Even Alliance Boots ended up slipping 0.05 percent to £10.265, despite the fact that Europe's biggest pharmacy chain received an increased offer from US investment group KKR worth £10.06 billion (US$19.61 billion) in cash.
KKR, which is tabling a joint bid with Alliance Boots' executive deputy chairman Stefano Pessina, has offered £10.40 per share, and the market reckoned the company would likely accept the offer.
British Airways meanwhile slumped 1.73 percent to £4.8881, hurt by the prospect of higher fuel costs. BA said it might sell its 10 percent stake in Spanish national carrier Iberia, which received a request for information from US private equity firm Texas Pacific Group which is considering a takeover bid.
Iberia signalled last week it was ready to look at a merger, amid expected consolidation of the industry following an EU-US deal to open up transatlantic air travel.
A potential TPG bid was believed to value Iberia at 3.60 euros a share.
The Spanish airline lost 0.25 percent at 3.99 euros in Madrid, while the IBEX-35 index added 0.25 percent to 14,641.70 points.
Elswhere Man Group, the world's biggest listed hedge fund, lost 1.77 percent to £5.55 in London after an expected announcement to demerge its brokerage unit, Man Financial, and list it on the New York Stock Exchange.
In Amsterdam, the AEX index fell back 0.26 percent to 510.50 points, the Swiss SMI was flat at 8,976.99, in Milan the SP/MIB was also unchanged at 41,771 and in Brussels the BEL-20 closed 0.49 percent lower at 4,471.65.
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
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],”
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
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