European stocks had the biggest weekly gain in a month, led by banks and raw-material producers, as concern eased that losses in the financial industry will worsen and higher metals prices lifted mining shares.
Barclays PLC added 10 percent and Credit Suisse Group AG rose 7 percent as the US government provided funding to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the biggest US mortgage-finance companies.
BHP Billiton Ltd, the world’s largest mining company, climbed 4.9 percent as copper rebounded. ITV PLC rallied 21 percent as Mediaset SpA reiterated interest in the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster.
Europe’s Dow Jones STOXX 600 Index added 3 percent to 280.41, trimming this year’s decline to 23 percent. Almost US$16 trillion has been erased from global equities this year as the first nationwide decline in US home prices since the Great Depression sparked more than US$510 billion in credit-related losses worldwide and threatened economic growth.
“People will start to see some light at the end of the tunnel now” for financial companies, said William De Vijlder, chief investment officer at Fortis Investments, which has the equivalent of US$309 in assets under management.
“We still believe we are in a commodities bull market,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview.
National benchmark indexes advanced in 14 of the 18 western European markets this week. France’s CAC 40 gained 3.2 percent, and Germany’s DAX added 1.8 percent. The UK’s FTSE 100 Index increased 3.4 percent this week. A computer fault on Monday left some traders without prices and unable to buy or sell shares in London for more than six hours.
Barclays, the UK’s third-largest bank, climbed 10 percent. Credit Suisse Group AG, Switzerland’s second-biggest bank, increased 7 percent.
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said last Sunday the US government would provide short-term funding to Fannie and Freddie and purchase debt backed by home loans. Paulson and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart placed the companies in a government-operated conservatorship.
Investors speculated on Friday that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. will be bought after the stock erased more than 70 percent of its value this week on a larger-than-estimated loss for the third quarter.
Rising metal prices helped send a measure of raw-material producers to the steepest gain among 18 industry groups in the STOXX 600, adding 5.4 percent. Copper rallied 3.4 percent in London this week, snapping a two-week decline. Nickel and tin also advanced.
BHP increased 4.9 percent. Anglo American PLC, the world’s fourth-biggest diversified mining company, rallied 8.6 percent.
ITV soared 21 percent, leading gains among media stocks in the STOXX 600 and posting the steepest advance among all shares in the measure.
Ciba Holding AG, the world’s largest maker of colors for plastics, surged 18 on speculation that the company may be a takeover target for bigger chemical companies. Ciba spokesman Tobias Woelfing said the company doesn’t comment on market “rumors.”
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
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