European shares lost ground on Friday as investors continued to worry about the impact of higher interest rates, while shares in French bank BNP Paribas rose after a report stirred up takeover hopes for the group.
The UK FTSE 100 index closed virtually unchanged at 6,505.10, the German DAX Xetra 30 index fell 0.4 percent to 7,590.50 and the French CAC-40 index slipped 0.1 percent to 5,883.29.
Equity markets have come under pressure as perceptions of interest rate levels have changed after indications of stronger-than-expected economic growth, particularly in the US. Most investors no longer expect the US Federal Reserve to cut interest rates this year and both the European Central Bank and the Bank of England are expected to raise rates later in the year.
Gains of more than 1.1 percent from chipmakers Infineon Technologies and STMicroelectronics and a positive open on Wall Street weren't enough to lift European markets to a higher close.
Mining companies were mostly lower. Kazakhmys fell 1.4 percent, Vedanta Resources lost 2.5 percent and BHP Billiton dropped 1.4 percent.
French bank BNP Paribas managed to gain 1.5 percent in Paris after a report that Societe Generale has commissioned two banks, one of which is Morgan Stanley, to study two cases of a possible tie-up with peer BNP Paribas, French daily Les Echos reported, without citing sources.
UK retail bank Lloyds TSB Group said that it has continued to make strong progress in the first half of the year. Shares slipped 0.3 percent, just underperforming the broader London market.
Elsewhere in Europe, in Milan the SP/MIB fell 0.51 percent to 41,712 points, in Amsterdam the AEX lost 0.07 percent to 534.69 points and in Brussels the BEL 20 lost 0.08 percent to 4,507.90 points.
The Swiss SMI index fell 0.02 percent to 9,150.62 points, while the EuroSTOXX 50 index fell 0.11 percent to 4,376.42 points.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS