European stocks rose for a fifth week, posting the longest stretch of weekly gains in four months as investors awaited developments in US negotiations to stop automatic tax hikes and spending cuts.
SBM Offshore NV soared 18 percent after seeking to settle a dispute with Talisman Energy Inc, while Centamin PLC surged 18 percent after the gold producer said operations have resumed at its Sukari mine in Egypt. Royal KPN NV plunged 19 percent as the Dutch phone company partly owned by Carlos Slim’s America Movil SAB cut its dividend.
Centamin PLC surged 18 percent after saying normal operations would resume at its Sukari mine after a dispute over diesel supplies that stopped operations.
Alcatel-Lucent rose 12 percent. The French government wishes to protect Alcatel’s strategic submarine cable unit, Les Echos reported on Friday. France Telecom SA is ready to purchase the unit in deal that could give Alcatel between 100 million euros (US$131.8 million) and 150 million euros, the newspaper said.
The benchmark STOXX Europe 600 Index rose 0.6 percent to 280.95 this week, paring gains after Republicans in the US House of Representatives canceled a vote on higher taxes for top earners, fueling concern budget talks will fail. The equity benchmark has rallied 20 percent from this year’s low on June 4 as the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve introduced bond-buying programs, and US GDP growth beat forecasts.
“The ‘fiscal cliff’ discussions are still on track and while there will be moderate risk aversion as US budget talks gyrate, the broad expectation is that there won’t be a disaster,” said Manish Singh, who helps manage US$2 billion as head of investment at Crossbridge Capital in London. “What supported sentiment this week was a better-than-expected third-quarter GDP in the US and investors getting excited about Japan again.”
The Bank of Japan this week expanded its asset-purchase fund to ¥76 trillion (US$903 billion) from ¥66 trillion and kept its credit-lending program unchanged at ¥25 trillion.
The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan reclaimed power in a landslide victory on Sunday last week. Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s party now has a mandate to implement fiscal and monetary stimulus plans.
US lawmakers will not vote on the end-of-year budget until after Christmas, giving them less than a week to reach agreement after US House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner yielded to anti-tax resistance in the Republican party and scrapped a plan to allow higher tax rates on annual income above US$1 million.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last