European stocks were little changed, after swinging between gains and losses, as investors weighed the possibility of a successful outcome to last-ditch Greek talks.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index rose 0.1 percent to 396.85 at the close of trading on Friday. Shares erased a decline of as much as 0.8 percent after an official said Greece’s creditors proposed a five-month extension to the aid program and 15.5 billion euros (US$17.4 billion) in disbursements to help seal a debt agreement.
The gauge then pared gains of as much as 0.5 percent when Athens News Agency reported the Greek government rejected the offer.
“If you’re looking at an investment horizon of at least the rest of the year, Greece — whether or not the outcome is a new bailout — is not that important for European equities,” Copenhagen-based Saxo Bank market strategist Mads Koefoed said. “We’ll shift back to the fundamentals after a bit of commotion.”
The benchmark European equity gauge posted a 2.9 percent weekly gain, leaving it down 0.1 percent in the quarter. Greece’s ASE Index rose 2 percent on Friday, the best performer among western European markets.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande Friday, while finance ministers reconvened yesterday in a last-ditch attempt to thrash out an agreement. Greece owes the IMF 1.5 billion euros at the end of the month.
Among shares active on corporate news, K+S AG soared 30 percent. People familiar with the matter said the German potash supplier might reject as too low a takeover offer from Canadian fertilizer producer Potash Corp of Saskatchewan Inc.
Tesco PLC added 2.7 percent after the UK’s biggest supermarket chain posted a smaller-than-forecast decline in quarterly sales. J Sainsbury PLC rose 0.7 percent.
Commodity producers fell the most among 19 industry groups on the STOXX 600. Anglo American PLC and BHP Billiton Ltd lost at least 2.5 percent.
ARM Holdings PLC dropped 5.1 percent after Sanford C. Bernstein cut its rating on the chip designer to underperform, similar to sell.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the