European shares posted this year’s biggest advance, buoyed by a surprise election win for British Prime Minister David Cameron’s party and improving US jobs data.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index surged 2.9 percent to 400.16 at the close of trading, up 1.4 percent for the week. The gauge extended gains after data showed the US unemployment rate fell to a six-year low in April, while payrolls climbed 223,000.
The UK’s FTSE 100 Index rebounded 2.3 percent from a one- month low after the Conservatives reached the 326-seat threshold necessary to end a coalition with the Liberal Democrats and govern alone. All but two stocks rose.
“Markets don’t like uncertainty, and there would’ve been uncertainty with a hung parliament. Now it looks like it’ll likely be a majority,” London-based CMC Markets PLC market analyst Jasper Lawler said.
German and Swiss stocks were among the best performers in western-European markets. The DAX Index climbed 2.7 percent, completing its best week in a month, while the Swiss Market Index added 2.5 percent, ending a three-day decline. The volume of shares changing hands in STOXX 600 companies was 36 percent higher than the 30-day average, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
British lenders and utilities rallied after the defeat of Labour, which had pledged more levies on bank balance sheets and fixed prices in the household-energy industry. Lloyds Banking Group PLC and Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC jumped at least 5.8 percent, while Centrica PLC and SSE PLC advanced more than 5.3 percent.
Barratt Developments PLC and Berkeley Group Holdings PLC rose more than 7.1 percent, pacing gains among UK homebuilders. Betting company Ladbrokes PLC surged 9.9 percent.
Among shares active on corporate news, Syngenta AG surged 19 percent after the agrochemicals maker rejected an offer of 41.7 billion Swiss francs (US$45 billion) by Monsanto Co.
Nokia Oyj added 4.1 percent after the New York Times reported that Uber Technologies Inc has submitted a bid for its maps business. Enel SpA gained 4.1 percent and Nokian Renkaat Oyj jumped 9.1 percent after both companies reported quarterly sales and earnings that beat analysts’ estimates.
Greece’s ASE Index fell 0.3 percent before a meeting of eurozone finance ministers tomorrow, the only Western European market to decline.
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
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
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],”
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