European stocks advanced, posting their first monthly gain since May, as drugmakers climbed, outweighing a slump in Tesco PLC shares.
AstraZeneca PLC climbed 2 percent, leading a gain by healthcare companies, after a report that Pfizer Inc may have resumed takeover talks. Tesco dropped 6.6 percent after lowering its full-year profit forecast and its interim dividend.
The STOXX 600 gained 0.3 percent to 342 on Friday in London, erasing a decline of as much as 0.4 percent in the final half an hour of trading. The benchmark dropped 0.7 percent on Thursday as evidence mounted that Russian troops have made an incursion into eastern Ukraine.
“Tesco’s surprise announcement has been taken as a sign that competition in the sector is about to intensify, at shareholders’ expense,” said Guy Foster, the London-based head of research at Brewin Dolphin Securities Ltd. “The healthcare sector is being led by AstraZeneca bid rumors.”
The STOXX 600 climbed 1.6 percent this week and 1.8 percent this month, as European Central Bank President Mario Draghi signaled policymakers were ready to start a bond-buying program. It dropped last month and in June.
Twelve out of 18 national benchmark indices in Western Europe rose on Friday. Germany’s DAX added 0.1 percent, while France’s CAC 40 gained 0.3 percent. The UK’s FTSE 100 increased 0.2 percent.
AstraZeneca gained 2 percent to £45.67. Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri said Pfizer may have restarted bid talks with the London-listed drugmaker, without revealing where it got the information. The US company abandoned a US$117 billion bid to buy AstraZeneca in May. UK takeover rules prevented it from resuming talks until Aug. 26.
Tesco slid 6.6 percent to £2.30, its lowest price since 2003, after the UK’s biggest retailer lowered its full-year profit forecast to a range of £2.4 billion to £2.5 billion (US$3.98 billion to US$4.15 billion), and cut its interim dividend by 75 percent to £0.0116 per share. It expects first-half trading profit to reach £1.1 billion. Dave Lewis will take over as chief executive officer from tomorrow, instead of Oct. 1 as previously announced.
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