European shares steadied on Friday, but suffered their worst week since the end of March as uncertainty over global trade rippled through markets and investors dumped riskier sectors.
The pan-European STOXX 600 benchmark was 0.08 percent higher at the close, recovering from a fresh five-month low hit earlier in the session, while the exporter-heavy German DAX also ended little changed.
The STOXX 600 ended off earlier lows after White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNBC that the US continued to talk with China about a number of trade issues, but added that so far China has not met Washington’s requests.
However, the STOXX 600 fell 2.2 percent on the week, its worst performance since the end of March, with investors’ appetite for risk dented by worries that the trade dispute between the US and China could escalate, as well as weakness in emerging markets.
“Equity investors have returned from their holidays to find the headlines still dominated by trade war fears and are understandably in no great rush to commit cash to equities with index benchmarks in a clear short-term downtrend,” Peel Hunt LLP strategist Ian Williams said.
Shares in more cyclical sectors, such as financials, energy and miners, were shunned this week as markets remained on edge after the deadline to comment on proposed US tariffs on an additional US$200 billion of Chinese imports passed.
Basic materials and banks were the worst sectoral performers, both ending down about 1 percent.
European autos, which have been particularly sensitive to headlines on tariffs, on Friday hit a fresh 33-month low before recovering some ground and end up 0.2 percent.
A 1.3 percent fall in shares of International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (IAG) weighed on the travel and leisure sector, which fell 0.3 percent.
British Airways, owned by IAG, said it had suffered a data breach involving the theft of financial and personal data from potentially hundreds of thousands of customers.
“That credit card information has been accessed by the hackers arguably makes this an order of magnitude more serious than the high-profile data breach at Dixons Carphone in 2017,” AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said.
In the Dixons breach, the affected customer records did not contain payment card or bank account details.
Among Friday’s gainers, shares in French telecoms Iliad SA rose 2.3 percent on speculation that the company could be delisted.
Iliad declined to comment on the rumors.
Amer Sports Oyj advanced 3.4 percent after the Finnish sporting goods maker put its Mavic cycling business up for possible sale late on Wednesday.
The company said that it was reviewing options for its fitness equipment and sports watch businesses.
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
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],”
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day