European stocks rose for a second week as the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BOE) said interest rates will remain low for an extended period of time.
PSA Peugeot Citroen surged 12 percent, its biggest weekly gain since May. Nokia Oyj rallied 9.1 percent after the Finnish phonemaker agreed to buy Siemens AG’s stake in their joint venture, Nokia Siemens Networks.
Fresenius Medical Care AG tumbled 12 percent after the US government proposed cutting payments to dialysis-center operators under the Medicare program from next year.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index rose 1.2 percent to 288.31 this week. The equity benchmark has pared its retreat from its year high on May 22 to 7.2 percent.
National benchmark indices rose in 15 of the 18 western European markets this week. The UK’s FTSE 100 gained 2.6 percent and France’s CAC 40 climbed 0.4 percent, while Germany’s DAX Index slid 1.9 percent.
Portugal’s PSI 20 Index retreated 2.7 percent this week as the government lost the leader of its junior coalition partner.
Democratic and Social Centre People’s Party head Paulo Portas resigned from his ministerial job on Tuesday after Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho named Maria Luis Albuquerque minister of finance, saying Albuquerque would just continue the country’s deficit-cutting plans.
The STOXX 600 declined 3 percent in the second quarter as US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke indicated the central bank may reduce its asset purchases if the US economy improves in line with its forecasts.
“The fact that the ECB and the BOE will keep rates low for longer than expected weakened the euro and sterling and this provided a huge boost to the stock market,” Hampstead Capital LLP fund manager Lex Van Dam said.
European stocks rallied 2.3 percent on Thursday as ECB President Mario Draghi said interest rates will remain at their current levels or lower for as long as necessary.
“What the [ECB] Governing Council did today was to inject a downward bias in interest rates for the foreseeable future,” he said. “Our exit is very distant.”
In the UK, the Bank of England signaled that it will leave interest rates at a record low for longer than investors had expected.
“The implied rise in the expected future path of bank rate was not warranted by the recent developments in the domestic economy,” the BOE said in a statement on Thursday.
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