European stocks rose with mining companies amid investor confidence that central banks’ willingness to support global growth would bear fruit.
Anglo American and Glencore led a rebound in resource-related stocks. Daimler AG and Volkswagen AG pushed carmakers higher as a weaker euro boosted earnings prospects. Standard Chartered PLC led a measure of banks to its first daily advance since Monday.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index rose 0.3 percent to 341.71 at the close of trading on Friday. The equity gauge rebounded as much as 14 percent since a Feb. 11 low amid a rally in banks and miners, and central banks’ steps to spur growth. This week’s scaling back by the US Federal Reserve of expectations for interest-rate increases complemented a wave of monetary easing that saw Norway cut borrowing costs and Switzerland hold rates at record lows, a week after the European Central Bank boosted stimulus.
“We’ve finally seen some light at the end of the tunnel,” said William Hobbs, head of investment strategy at Barclays PLC’s wealth-management unit in London. “Central banks will remain accommodative. Better economic prospects in different parts of the world signal that this may at some point happen in Europe.”
Still, lingering uncertainty over corporate earnings has restrained progress, and the STOXX 600 posted its first weekly decline in five.
Strategists have slashed expectations for European stocks, painting the gloomiest annual outlook in five years.The Euro STOXX 50 Index is forecast to advance 1 percent by the end of this year. Only a few months ago, those same strategists were calling a 12 percent rally.
Among stocks moving on corporate news, Salvatore Ferragamo SpA added 3.1 percent after the Italian luxury-shoe maker posted better-than-expected full-year earnings and predicted another positive year.
Assicurazioni Generali SpA slid 1.7 percent after reporting worse-than-estimated net income. Berkeley Group Holdings PLC fell 2.2 percent after London’s biggest homebuilder reported a drop in reservations, even as it forecast the year’s results to reach the top end of expectations.
Abengoa SA slid 4.2 percent after the Spanish renewable energy company seeking to avoid insolvency asked financial creditors for a seven-month standstill to help it restructure 9.4 billion euros (US$10.6 billion) of debt. Home Retail PLC tumbled 9.9 percent after Steinhoff International Holdings NV said it would not make an offer for the UK retailer.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
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