European stocks pared a weekly rally, erasing gains in the final hour of trading after Ukraine said its troops partially destroyed a military convoy that entered the country from Russia.
SVG Capital PLC lost 4.5 percent after Permira Holdings Ltd sold its entire stake in the company, while Hennes & Mauritz AB advanced after posting a surge in sales last month.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index fell 0.4 percent — the most in a week — to 329.72 at the close of trading in London, paring its weekly increase to 1.5 percent.
The gauge had rallied as much as 0.9 percent earlier on Friday. It has dropped 5.7 percent from a six-year high reached on June 10 as US President Barack Obama authorized air strikes against militants in Iraq and concern grew that fighting in Ukraine would disrupt world trade.
“The big issue for markets is proof of the credibility of those reports out of the crisis area,” Guillermo Hernandez Sampere of MPPM EK wrote in an e-mail. “For weeks now we were getting news [that] Russian troops would cross the border, but these weren’t proved. Any escalation is driving investors to risk-off mode.”
Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kiev that government troops engaged the Russian armed vehicles that had arrived overnight through a rebel-held section of the border.
Ukrainian soldiers continue to come under shelling, including rounds fired from Russia, he said. Moscow said it was concerned about an attack on another convoy carrying aid.
The STOXX 600 climbed 1.9 percent this week through yesterday as companies from EON SE to Swiss Life Holding AG posted better-than-estimated earnings and weaker data on eurozone growth fueled speculation that the European Central Bank may need to increase stimulus.
The index was heading for its biggest weekly gain of the year before erasing yesterday’s rally.
National benchmark indices fell in 11 of the 15 Western European markets open on Friday. France’s CAC 40 Index dropped 0.7 percent, the DAX lost 1.4 percent and the UK’s FTSE 100 Index gained less than 0.1 percent
Markets in Greece, Italy and Austria were closed on Friday for the Assumption Day holiday. The number of shares changing hands in STOXX 600 companies was 36 percent lower than the average of the past 30 days, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
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