European stocks rose for a fourth week as earnings from Cie. Financiere Richemont SA to ICAP PLC beat analyst estimates and the Bank of England (BOE) lifted its growth forecast for Europe’s third-biggest economy.
Richemont gained 13 percent as it also proposed a dividend that surpassed projections. Renault SA led shares of automobile companies higher as the region’s car sales increased for the first time in 19 months. Suedzucker AG plunged 16 percent after saying full-year operating profit will decline.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index advanced 1.2 percent to 308.72 this week, completing its longest streak of weekly gains since March 15. The measure has rallied 10 percent so far this year, its best start to a year since 1998, bolstered by central-bank monetary stimulus and better-than-estimated US economic data.
“Companies have cut costs and have been able to produce better-than-expected earnings,” said Guillaume Duchesne, an equity strategist at BGL BNP Paribas SA in Luxembourg. “There is a new appetite for cyclical sectors with the idea that the economy may improve.”
BOE Governor Mervyn King on Wednesday said that an economic recovery in the UK was now “in sight.” In the central bank’s quarterly inflation report, King’s last before his retirement in July, officials predicted that growth would accelerate to 0.5 percent in the second quarter from 0.3 percent in the first three months of the year.
Stocks erased intraday losses on Tuesday after billionaire David Tepper, who runs hedge-fund firm Appaloosa Management LP, said in an interview on CNBC that he was “definitely bullish” about markets.
US data on Friday showed that consumer confidence this month rose to the highest level in almost six years and leading economic indicators last month climbed by more than estimated.
Still, German investor confidence this month rose less than forecast, an earlier report showed. The ZEW Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim said its index of investor and analyst expectations, which aims to predict economic developments six months in advance, increased to 36.4 from 36.3 last month. Economists in a Bloomberg News survey had forecast a gain to 40.
National benchmark indexes rallied in all of western Europe’s 18 markets, except Portugal and Iceland. France’s CAC 40 added 1.2 percent, the UK’s FTSE 100 Index increased 1.5 percent, while Germany’s DAX climbed 1.4 percent.
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
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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