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.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Taiwanese prosecutors suspect that three people successfully smuggled at least one shipment of Nvidia Corp artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China after first exporting them to Japan, people familiar with the matter said. The trio was detained last week by the Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office for allegedly falsifying documents related to exports of Super Micro Computer Inc servers containing advanced Nvidia chips, which the US has barred from sale to China without a license from Washington. The move marked Taiwan’s first public crackdown on AI chip diversion after years of pressure from the US to take a more active role in curtailing
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) employee bonuses are likely to grow more than 30 percent this year, in line with the past few years as the company’s profits continue to set new records, an anonymous source cited TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) as saying yesterday. TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is committed to taking care of its workers, the source said, citing Wei’s meeting with employees yesterday morning. Wei also expressed gratitude to employees for their contribution to the company’s improving bottom line, the source added. Since 2023, TSMC’s employee bonuses have grown at an annual rate of
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