The Dow Jones Stoxx 50 and Stoxx 600 indexes posted their biggest weekly gains in more than two months, led by exporters such as Royal Philips Electronics NV and Siemens AG.
Julius Baer Holding AG, a Swiss bank, jumped 8.3 percent yesterday after saying the business climate has "improved significantly." National Grid Transco Plc fell 2 percent after 1.25 million customers of its Niagara Mohawk Holdings Inc unit were left without power in North America's largest blackout.
The Stoxx 600 rose 0.2 percent to 213.52, for a 2.7 percent gain on the week. The index has climbed for the past seven sessions, the longest winning streak since Dec. 30, 1999. The Stoxx 50 index advanced for the sixth day in seven, adding 0.1 percent to 2496.71. It rose 2.8 percent during the week.
The dollar gained 0.3 percent against the euro in the past five days, lifting the value of European companies' US sales.
It had its second weekly gain in three against the euro on evidence growth in the US is improving. Europe's 300 biggest companies rely on the US for about a fifth of their sales, according to HSBC Holdings Plc.
Rays of hope
"We're seeing rays of hope," said Kevin Lilley, a fund manager at Royal London Asset Management who manages the equivalent of US$800 million and recently bought shares of Clariant AG, the world's second-largest specialty-chemicals maker. "My view is that the market's going to go up."
The US economy is showing signs of accelerating as Europe's flounders. The July rise in US retail sales was the biggest in four months, and manufacturing expanded last month for the first time since February. GDP in the 12-nation euro region, meantime, was unchanged in the second quarter with Germany's economy, Europe's biggest, shrinking 0.1 percent.
Benchmark indexes advanced in nine of the 12 Western European markets open yesterday. Germany's DAX slid 0.3 percent, cutting its weekly advance to 3.4 percent. The UK's FTSE 100 climbed 0.2 percent, for a five-day gain of 2.4 percent. France's CAC rose 0.5 percent. It gained 3.6 percent on the week. Greek, Austrian, Spanish, Luxembourg and Italian markets were closed.
September futures on the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 Index of companies based in the 12 countries sharing the euro dropped 0.1 percent to 2561. The index gained 0.2 percent to 2548.86.
Equity markets
"We are positive for equity markets," said Andrew Hornig, chief strategist at F&C Manage-ment Ltd, which oversees US$97.5 billion.
"We think they will go higher," he said, because economic reports and corporate profits will improve in coming months.
Philips, which gets more than 25 percent of sales from the world's biggest economy, advanced 7.7 percent in the past five sessions. Siemens, Germany's largest engineering company, added 6.1 percent. US sales amount to almost a quarter of its total.
Daimlerchrysler
DaimlerChrysler, the world's fifth-largest carmaker, added 5.9 percent. It relies on the US for more than 50 percent of its sales. Volkswagen AG, which makes about a fifth of its annual sales in the US, gained 12 percent.
Swiss Reinsurance Co, the world's second-largest reinsurer, led gains in the Stoxx 50 this week, adding 8.2 percent.
The Stoxx 600 insurance index added 4.4 percent this week, the second-best performer among 18 industry groups. Automakers, up 6.4 percent, were the best performing industry.
Prudential Plc, the UK's largest insurance company by premiums, climbed 6.5 percent. Axa SA, Europe's second-biggest insurance company, added 7.1 percent over the past five days after saying Tuesday that first-half operating profit unexpectedly rose 6 percent.
Munich Re rose 1.4 percent to 97.80 euros yesterday, extending its gain for the week to 5.4 percent. Morgan Stanley advised investors to pare holdings in Allianz AG, Europe's largest insurance company, in favor of Munich Re.
Allianz
Allianz fell 3.1 percent to 85.35 euros after the brokerage described the insurer's shares as "fully valued." The shares have fallen 0.5 percent in the past week. Allianz has gained 4.1 percent this year, compared with Munich Re's 14 percent decline.
Julius Baer surged 8.4 percent to 376 Swiss francs. The company said it will cut costs by more than 11 percent this year after first-half profit fell 86 percent to 16 million Swiss francs (US$12 million) from a year earlier.
Hagemeyer NV, which distributes industrial-safety products, led the week's gains on the Stoxx 600, adding 35 percent. The 102 year-old Dutch company advanced after saying Monday that banks agreed to discuss keeping open a 1.2 billion-euro (US$1.4 billion) line of credit.
"The risk of bankruptcy has been holding back the share price but it has been wildly overstated," said Arjan Sweere, an analyst at Petercam Nederland who rates Hagemeyer "buy," on Thursday. "The valuation has been ridiculously low."
Bang & Olufsen A/S, a Danish maker of luxury televisions and stereo systems founded in 1925, surged 18 percent yesterday to 213 euros after saying it expects pretax profit to climb as much as 14 percent this fiscal year and doubled its dividend. It gained 15 percent in the week.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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