European shares slid on Friday, with Italian stocks 2.5 percent lower on political uncertainty, while comments by US President Donald Trump that he was not going to make a trade deal with China also weighed on sentiment.
Italy’s main index touched a two-month low, with its bank index tumbling 4.5 percent after the leader of the ruling League party, Matteo Salvini, pulled his support for the country’s governing coalition on Thursday and called for fresh elections.
Italy’s budget crisis and prospect of ultra-low interest rates for longer have already damaged bank stocks’ valuations and the fresh political concerns sent the bank index to its lowest since September 2016.
Italian 10-year government bond yields posted their biggest weekly rise this year.
“It leads to uncertainty, because obviously we don’t know when it will be possible for Italy to improve their budget because they’ve only just come to an agreement with Brussels, which could very easily be upended,” Rabobank NV head of macro strategy Elwin de Groot said.
Along with drops of more than 1 percent in most other major indices, including trade-sensitive German stocks, the pan-European STOXX 600 gave up 0.8 percent, in line with a move lower in world stocks.
Trump’s remarks on a trade deal with China followed a report that said Washington was delaying a decision to allow some trade between US firms and China’s telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co (華為) again.
This added to worries about an escalation in trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, which has seen the STOXX 600 fall 1.7 percent over the week as investors worried over a prolonged impact on global economic growth.
Sectors most exposed to China and trade issues, such as technology, basic materials and automakers, led losses in Europe along with banks.
“It is a risk-off sentiment, but investors aren’t desperate yet ... it’s more like the realization that we are in for a rough ride,” De Groot said.
However, losses on London’s FTSE were limited by a rally in healthcare stocks and a 7.2 percent surge in advertising company WPP PLC after it reported improved second-quarter trading.
The rise in the healthcare index came after strong results from Hikma Pharma PLC and Carl Zeiss SMT GmbH, and was also helped by a 2.6 percent rise in Bayer AG.
The British pound was hit by data showing that the UK’s economy experienced a shock contraction in the second quarter in a severe hangover from a pre-Brexit stockpiling boost.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained