European stocks fell for the first week in four as Alcoa Inc and Google Inc kicked off the US earnings season with weaker-than-estimated results and Japan raised the severity rating of its nuclear crisis.
Kazakhmys PLC, Kazakhstan’s biggest copper producer, and Antofagasta PLC, the copper producer controlled by Chile’s Luksic family, sank more than 7 percent as the metal had the biggest weekly drop in a month. National Bank of Greece SA fell 8.1 percent as the nation’s bonds declined.
The benchmark STOXX Europe 600 Index slid 1.4 percent this past week. Despite the drop, the gauge has still rallied 6 percent from this year’s low on March 16 amid speculation the economic recovery will withstand the effects of Japan’s worst earthquake on record and popular revolts in the Middle East and North Africa.
“European markets were negatively affected after the Fukushima [Dai-ichi] nuclear crisis was upgraded to the highest possible level now on par with Chernobyl,” said Anita Paluch, a sales trader at ETX Capital in London. “The unofficial start of the earnings season in the US, with Alcoa reporting, delivered rather disappointing results.”
Alcoa and Google both fell after reporting earnings this week. Alcoa, the largest US aluminum producer, posted sales that trailed the US$6.06 billion average estimate of eight analysts in a Bloomberg survey and said raw-material costs climbed. Google, the world’s biggest Internet-search company, reported a 54 percent jump in first-quarter operating costs, outstripping a sales gain of 29 percent. Bank of America Corp reported first-quarter profit that missed projections.
Kazakhmys slumped 8.7 percent, while Antofagasta retreated 7.1 percent. Copper dropped 4.9 percent on the London Metal Exchange this week as record Chinese production added to supply and stronger-than-forecast growth in the country prompted speculation the government might further curb lending. Basic-resource shares were the worst performers among 19 industry groups in the STOXX 600.
The yield on Greece’s 10-year bond climbed above 13 percent for the first time since at least 1998 this week, as German Federal Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schaeuble told Die Welt newspaper that the Mediterranean country may need to restructure its debt.
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