European stocks tumbled by the most in eight months this week after Japan’s earthquake and ensuing tsunami on Friday last week damaged cooling systems at an atomic power plant, causing the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Swiss Reinsurance Co and Munich Re led insurers lower for a second week amid concern the industry may face claims of as much as ¥2.8 trillion (US$35 billion) from the Asian nation’s biggest quake on record. E.ON AG and RWE AG sank more than 9 percent after the crisis prompted Germany to reconsider extending the life of its nuclear plants. Areva SA, the world’s largest builder of atomic reactors, slid the most since 2001.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index plunged 2.8 percent to 267.63 this past week, the biggest drop since July last year. The gauge has fallen for four straight weeks, the longest losing streak since May last year.
The nuclear crisis was a “critical issue for the market,” said Mike Lenhoff, London-based chief strategist at Brewin Dolphin Securities Ltd, whose parent company oversees about US$33 billion.
“Given the lead role that Asia and China have played in the economic recovery, the overall impact was clearly very unwelcome and tragic,” Lenhoff said.
Stocks pared their weekly losses as the G7 nations jointly intervened in the foreign-exchange market on Friday for the first time in more than a decade after the yen soared to a post-World War II high against the US dollar, threatening Japan’s recovery.
Since reaching a two-and-a-half-year high on Feb. 17, the STOXX 600 has retreated 8.1 percent as oil surged amid increasing political unrest in the Middle East and fighting between Libyan rebels and forces loyal to their leader for the last 41 years, Muammar Qaddafi.
National benchmark indexes fell in 15 of the 18 Western Europe markets this past week. The UK’s FTSE 100 dropped 1.9 percent, Germany’s DAX lost 4.5 percent and France’s CAC 40 retreated 3 percent. Greece’s ASE Index gained 0.8 percent after the EU agreed on a retooled bailout plan for the region’s most indebted nations, two weeks sooner than investors anticipated.
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained