European stocks fell this week as economic reports in China and the US signaled the global recovery may falter and as Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc reported sales that trailed analysts’ estimates.
Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG and Barclays PLC declined more than 3 percent as concerns grew about the performance of some US banks in the second quarter. Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton Ltd led raw-material shares to the largest drop among all 19 industry groups on the benchmark STOXX Europe 600 Index.
The STOXX 600 fell 0.8 percent to 248.11, paring last week’s 5.4 percent rally, the biggest gain in a year. The gauge remains 8.8 percent below this year’s high on April 15 on concern that the global economic recovery is losing steam as indebted European governments slash spending and China takes steps to tame inflation.
“Recent worries about the strength of the economic recovery have come back to the forefront of investors’ minds,” said David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Markets in London. “The past quarter may well have been good for business, but at the moment the future still looks fragile and it is difficult to see much real headway being made by stock markets in the short to medium term.”
“There has been a definite change in perception of the US being somehow insulated from what is happening in the rest of the world,” Gary Baker, head of European equity strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said at a press briefing in London this week. “Investors are starting to question those assumptions.”
National benchmark indexes fell in 14 of the 18 western European markets. France’s CAC 40 Index lost 1.5 percent and Germany’s DAX Index retreated 0.4 percent. The UK’s FTSE 100 gained 0.5 percent.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
MIXED SOURCING: While Taiwan is expanding domestic production, it also sources munitions overseas, as some, like M855 rounds, are cheaper than locally made ones Taiwan and the US plan to jointly produce 155mm artillery shells, as the munition is in high demand due to the Ukraine-Russia war and should be useful in Taiwan’s self-defense, Armaments Bureau Director-General Lieutenant General Lin Wen-hsiang (林文祥) told lawmakers in Taipei yesterday. Lin was responding to questions about Taiwan’s partnership with allies in producing munitions at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Given the intense demand for 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and in light of Taiwan’s own defensive needs, Taipei and Washington plan to jointly produce 155mm shells, said Lin,
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