European and London shares on Friday fell, erasing their early gains, while some logged their steepest weekly drop in five months as supportive measures from regulators across the US and Europe failed to allay fears over a brewing global banking crisis.
The pan-European STOXX 600 closed down 5.33 points, or 1.21 percent, at 436.31, dragged by bank, insurance and financial services stocks.
The bank index lost 2.6 percent, with HSBC Holdings PLC, BNP Paribas, Allianz SE and UBS Group AG losing 1 percent to and 3 percent.
A US$30 billion lifeline by large U.S. banks for embattled lender First Republic Bank, less than a day after battered Credit Suisse Group AG clinched a mega central bank loan, had boosted the bank index by as much as 2.2 percent earlier in the day.
Later in the day, SVB Financial filed for a court-supervised reorganization under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to seek buyers for its assets.
“Central banks have done the right things in putting an effective backstop in place ... it’s just going to take some time,” said Jeffrey Kleintop, chief global investment strategist at Charles Schwab & Co.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Euro zone inflation eased a touch last month, figures showed on Friday, but underlying price growth continued to accelerate on a surge in services costs.
“The core CPI is still climbing, making it unclear when the hiking cycle will end ... there are some concerns about what will these global central banks do,” Kleintop added.
The benchmark STOXX 600 lost 3.84 percent this week, with bank stocks bleeding 11.5 percent, after the US and European lenders’ meltdown left investors panicking about the financial sector’s health.
Credit Suisse, too, reversed early gains and dropped 8 percent, following a 19 percent rise in the previous session.
In London, the blue-chip FTSE 100 lost 74.63 points, 1.01 percent, to close at 7,335.40, while the mid-cap FTSE 250 lost 287.75 points, or 1.53 percent, to close at 18,470.83.
British banks fell 2.6 percent, with major lenders including HSBC, Barclays and Standard Chartered PLC down from 1.9 percent to 2.8 percent.
“The market has been flip-flopping over these bank stories about whether there can be risk of contagion from SVB or Credit Suisse,” HYCM chief market analyst Giles Coghlan said.
“They [markets] are still concerned that there’s going to be further defaults from some other unknown source,” he said.
The international-focused FTSE 100 posted its worst weekly performance, down 5.33 percent, while the FTSE 250 lost 4.58 percent for the week.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last