European stocks fell, trimming their fourth straight weekly advance, as a surge in US unemployment to a 25-year high damped optimism that the worst of the global recession is over.
Credit Suisse Group AG and Deutsche Bank AG slid more than 1.8 percent as a report showed employers in America cut 663,000 jobs last month.
Novo Nordisk AS tumbled 14 percent after the drugmaker’s experimental diabetes shot received a split recommendation from a US advisory panel. Renault SA and Daimler AG led automakers higher as Credit Suisse upgraded the industry to “overweight.”
“We have a very awful, deep recession,” Jan Loeys, JPMorgan Chase & Co’s global head of market strategy, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in London.
“At some point we will be turning around, but the question is: Is it this year or next year?” Loeys said.
The Dow Jones STOXX 600 Index slid 1 percent to 186.17. The measure posted its fourth week of gains, the longest streak since the global bear market that wiped out US$37 trillion of equity value began in October 2007.
The benchmark index for European stocks has climbed 18 percent since March 9 as the biggest US banks said they made money in the first two months of this year and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiled plans to finance as much as US$1 trillion in purchases of banks’ distressed assets.
National benchmark indexes retreated in 14 of the 18 western European markets. France’s CAC 40 lost 1.1 percent and Germany’s DAX added 0.1 percent. The UK’s FTSE 100 sank 2.3 percent as Tesco PLC retreated.
Financial shares rallied this week as the US Financial Accounting Standards Board agreed to relax fair-value, or mark-to-market, accounting that requires banks to revalue assets each quarter to reflect market prices. Writedowns and credit-related losses at financial institutions have swelled to US$1.29 trillion since the start of 2007.
“You still want to be quite cautious,” said Paul Kavanagh, a partner at Killik & Co in London, which has about US$2.9 billion in assets under management.
“It’s far too early to start thinking about a recovery in the economy,” he said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique