European stocks trimmed their weekly gain amid increasing concern that Greece’s efforts to renegotiate its debt and stay in the single currency would fail.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index slipped 0.9 percent to 389.38 at the close of trading, paring its weekly gain to 0.1 percent.
Greece’s ASE Index lost 5.9 percent, for the biggest decline among western European markets, with National Bank of Greece SA and Eurobank Ergasias SA falling more than 10 percent.
Portugal’s PSI 20 Index posted the second-worst performance, with a 1.5 percent drop.
Pressure is mounting on Greece to come up with a solution after the IMF withdrew from talks in Brussels on Thursday, citing “major differences.”
Greece ruled out cutting pensions and demanded debt restructuring. Euro-area officials called for a proposal to stabilize the country’s debt by the end of Friday, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to accept a framework for aid.
Her advisers are already discussing how to deal with a Greek default, Bild newspaper reported.
“I’m beginning to get concerned,” said Henrik Drusebjerg, who helps manage about US$17 billion as chief strategist at Carnegie Investment Bank AB in Copenhagen.
“You’re caught in a dilemma. You can’t seek the bond market for protection. You’re scared for the stock market because of Greece and the Fed, which is closing in on the first rate hike. A lot of investors are very frustrated as to where to place their money,” Drusebjerg said.
Among stocks moving on corporate news on Friday, Zodiac Aerospace plunged 5.4 percent after saying it might not meet this year’s target for operating income.
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
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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