European stocks posted their biggest weekly advance in more than four months as US unemployment remained at a four-year low and manufacturing growth in the world’s two largest economies beat projections.
Nokia Oyj surged 41 percent this week after Microsoft Corp agreed to buy its handset unit for 5.44 billion euros (US$7.2 billion) and brokers upgraded their ratings on the shares. Alcatel-Lucent SA rose 22 percent amid speculation Nokia could bid for its wireless business.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index gained 3 percent to 306.10 this week, its best weekly performance since April 26. The benchmark slipped 0.8 percent last month, the second monthly loss in more than a year. Still, it has rallied 26 percent from this year’s low on June 24, as the European Central Bank and the Bank of England pledged to keep interest rates low.
“All the latest data coming out of the US is quite encouraging,” David Hussey, head of European equities at Manulife Asset Management, said by phone from London. “The global economy is slowly healing, though we’re still nowhere near being given the all clear. The nub of it is whether the Fed will allow rates to appreciate more slowly, but the place to be will be in equities.”
The VSTOXX Index, a gauge of expected volatility in euro-area stocks based on options prices, slid 14 percent this week. National benchmark indices advanced in all of the 18 Western European markets except Iceland. Germany’s DAX and the UK’s FTSE 100 added 2.1 percent, while France’s CAC 40 gained 2.9 percent.
In the US, Labor Department figures showed the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 7.3 percent last month, the lowest since December 2008, even as employers added fewer workers than economists had projected.
And in China, an official measure of manufacturing activity rose to 51 last month from 50.3 in July, beating the median economist projection.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts