European shares advanced, as healthcare and industrial stocks rose, while investors speculated on a possible increase in US interest rates.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index added 0.3 percent to 396.61 at the close of trading, reversing earlier losses of as much as 0.4 percent. The equity gauge posted a weekly rise of 0.6 percent, as the weaker euro boosted exporters and the European Central Bank commenced its asset-buying program, even amid concerns that the US Federal Reserve might signal earlier rate hikes at its meeting next week.
“There is a bit of pre-FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] volatility as the market thinks a rate rise is coming,” said Manish Singh, who helps oversee US$2 billion as head of investments at Crossbridge Capital in London. “The market will continue to trade in a tight range until the meeting. Still, European equities have more to run, given they are starting from a low base. QE [quantitative easing] is supportive as it is moving investors away from bonds into equities and we may have good earnings ahead given how weak the euro has been.”
Measures of healthcare and industrial companies provided the most support to the index. Novo Nordisk AS gained 3.5 percent. ISS AS rose 6.3 percent after Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and EQT Partners AB sold their final stakes in the world’s biggest cleaning company. Jyske Bank AS said this removes a cap that has been on the stock since its initial public offering.
Commerzbank AG climbed 4.9 percent. The German lender on Friday said that it agreed to pay US$1.45 billion to settle multiple US investigations, closing the door on half a decade of legal woes over sanctions violations claims and its role in one of Japan’s biggest accounting scandals.
A gauge of energy shares posted the worst performance of the 19 industry groups on the STOXX 600, as oil headed for the longest stretch of weekly declines in almost two months amid signs that a global supply glut would expand. Royal Dutch Shell PLC contributed the most to the fall.
Eni SpA slid 4.6 percent after becoming the first major oil company to announce a dividend cut, as the Italian group prepares for a period of lower oil prices.
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