European shares were little changed on Friday, while France’s stock market dropped in the final trading session before the nation’s presidential election today.
The STOXX Europe 600 closed little changed at 378.12 in London. France’s CAC 40 Index fell 0.4 percent, trimming an earlier drop of as much as 1 percent.
The European regional benchmark saw a weekly drop of 0.6 percent, its steepest since late January.
The latest Opinionway poll showed support for independent candidate Emmanuel Macron and far-right contestant Marine Le Pen was stable at 23 percent and 22 percent respectively.
French voters go to the polls in a first-round vote, with Macron and Le Pen the frontrunners to advance to the final election next month.
The murder of a policeman on the Champs-Elysees has forced an early end to campaigning for the leading candidates, with the race wide open, according to polls.
“The possibility of a hard-right Marine Le Pen presidency has worried markets for some time, but another risk scenario to consider is the victory of far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon,” Roubini Global Economics senior economist Lars Lundqvist said. “If either Le Pen or Melenchon make it to the second round, markets would stay on their toes a bit longer.”
Danone SA dropped as much as 2.9 percent after reporting the third consecutive quarterly drop in volume and including its US$10 billion takeover of WhiteWave Foods Co in its organic growth for the year.
European equities are still priced for a slight valuation premium linked to acceleration in global growth momentum and are not reflecting an “obvious political risk discount,” Deutsche Bank AG strategists, including Sebastian Raedler, wrote in a note.
Investors in European lenders are getting cold feet. Bets for swings in lenders’ stocks have jumped and options reached their highest prices since February last year relative to those for euro-area blue chips.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the