Asian stocks plunged yesterday, with the regional index headed for its biggest drop in seven weeks after Japan’s machinery orders dropped, China’s export growth slowed and Europe’s debt crisis has infected Italy.
HSBC Holdings PLC, the UK’s largest lender by market value, sank 9.1 percent in Hong Kong after profit at its investment bank declined amid political and economic uncertainty in Europe. Fanuc Corp, a maker of industrial robots, slipped 4.1 percent in Tokyo. Noble Group Ltd slumped 25 percent in Singapore, its biggest plunge since 1998, as chief executive officer Ricardo Leiman quit after the Hong Kong-based commodity supplier posted its first loss in 14 years.
“Europe’s problems are structural and require more than a tinkering on the edges to resolve,” said Lee King Fuei, a Singapore-based fund manager at Schroders PLC, which has about US$326 billion of assets globally. “Solving these problems will require a fair bit of pain among citizens. Even if politicians know the right solutions, they risk getting kicked out. The global economic environment looks very challenging.”
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index declined 3.4 percent to 115.95 as of 6:02pm in Tokyo, poised for its biggest drop since Sept. 22. Just 50 of the 1,015 companies on the gauge advanced.
Gauges of financial and -industrial companies led the -decline. -Information technology companies had the third-biggest loss on the index as Elpida Memory Inc, which shed 10 percent, led chipmakers down after memory fell to a record low price.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average slipped 2.9 percent, the most since Aug. 5. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dropped 2.4 percent. China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell 1.8 percent as the nation’s exports rose at the slowest pace in almost two years. India’s markets were closed yesterday.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index tumbled 5.3 percent, the most since Aug. 9. South Korea’s KOSPI fell 4.9 percent. Volatility indexes for the Hong Kong and Japanese benchmark gauges jumped more than 20 percent. A gauge of price swings on the KOSPI 200 Index jumped 17 percent.
Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index swung between gains of 0.7 percent and losses of 0.6 percent. The index slumped 3.7 percent in New York on Wednesday, with only one stock advancing, the lowest number since June 29 last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“The big concern is that Italy will need to get its funding from other sources than the market,” said Stephen Halmarick, Sydney-based head of investment markets research at Colonial First State Global Asset Management, which oversees about US$150 billion. “Because of its size, people are very worried.”
Financial stocks were the main drag for the MSCI Asia Pacific Index amid concern political wrangling in Europe would hinder efforts to contain the debt crisis. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s drive to put together a unity government in Greece descended into disarray as rival parties squabbled over his replacement.
HSBC slumped 9.1 percent to HK$61.90 in Hong Kong, the most since March 2009, after the lender posted a 53 percent drop in third-quarter pretax profit at its investment bank and bad loan provisions climbed.
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd (中國工商銀行) sank 8.7 percent to HK$4.74 after Goldman Sachs Group Inc raised US$1.1 billion selling shares of ICBC, as the world’s biggest lender is known, at a discount. Goldman Sachs sold 1.75 billion ICBC shares at HK$4.88, two people with knowledge of the -matter said, asking not to be identified because the details are private.
Japanese industrial companies dropped after a report showed the nation’s machinery orders fell more than economists forecast in September, indicating companies may hold off capital outlays as Europe’s crisis threatens the global economic recovery.
Fanuc slipped 4.1 percent to ¥12,280 in Tokyo. Komatsu Ltd, Asia’s biggest maker of construction equipment, dropped 5.1 percent to ¥1,898.
Chipmakers tumbled after the price of computer-storage chips dropped to their cheapest levels on record. Elpida dropped 10 percent to ¥377. Toshiba Corp, which receives 18 percent of sales from semiconductors, retreated 6.7 percent to ¥323 Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), a Taiwanese DRAM chipmaker, dropped 7 percent to NT$4.12.
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