To Ike: Summary headline news
Saturday/Sunday
SINGAPORE: Most Asian currencies rebound; markets remain nervous.
WASHINGTON: US jobless plunges to 28-year low; Wall St., Euro bourses rally; yen rises against dollar.
LONDON: Japan to consider permanent tax cuts after upper house elections in July; Meanwhile, no progress seen between Indonesian officials and representatives of creditor banks on the country's private-sector foreign debt on Friday with no apparent progress.
BEIRUT: Arabs shrug off turmoil; US firm (Scudder Kemper Investments) bullish on equities in Arab world as markets tightened regulations and the region benefited from the Asian crisis.
SEOUL: S. Korean groups unveil major restructuring plan; Daewoo to raise $7b funds: S. Korean industrial giant Hyundai Group and other conglomerates unveiled major restructuring programs Thursday to reinvent their overstretched business empires built on reckless borrowing. Hyundai said it would raise $8.5bn in restructuring funds by 2002 through the spin-off of marginal units and asset selling.
TOKYO: Japan carmakers seek new partners; merger rocks industry: Japanese carmakers, badly hit by an economic slump at home, will seek new partners to survive growing competition, following their international rivals into mergers. Japan's auto industry was rocked by the 92 billion dollar merger between Germany's Daimler-Benz and US car giant Chrysler, which the two firms said would create the world's third largest carmaker. Stocks in Japan's troubled Nissan Motor Co. fell 5.4% while shares in Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. dipped slightly.
Meanwhile, Japan's Sony Corp. shrugged off an economic slump at home to drive group pre-tax profit up 45.2% to a record 453.7 billion yen ($3.4 bn)/
Japan's Honda Motor Co. Ltd. Said Thursday it had signed contracts to set up two joint ventures for the production and marketing of cars and engines in China. Honda would pay a total of $200 million to two Chinese partners (Guanzhou Motors Co. and Dongfu Motor Co.) in exchange of rights to form the ventures and obtain production and marketing rights in China.
Three long-term credit Japanese banks, Industrial Bank of Japan Ltd., Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan Ltd., and Nippon Credit Bank Ltd., each said they would cut their long-term lending rates by 0.2 percentage points to 2.4 per cent effective Friday.
Japan's Asahi Glass Co. Ltd. Is to buy a flat glass and auto glass operation in Europe from US manufacturer PPG Industries Inc. through its Belgian subsidiary. Purchase estimated at 30 billion yen. With the buy-up, Asahi's market shares in the European Union market would rise to 25%.
Japan's Sumitomo Corp said Friday it would book an extraordinary loss of $150 million to settle class action lawsuits filed in US courts against the company over rogue copper trading.
MANILA: Presidential hopefuls promise better life for 70m Filipinos; Ramos pins hope on economy saying he's confident the Philippines' economy will survive his successor, to be elected on Monday, but he worries about the poor.
BEIJING: Chinese President, Jiang Zemin bullish despite Asian crisis. In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Jiang said China's first quarter trade figures indicated that the crisis "has not had a profound impact on our export ability."
ABU DHABI: Arabs act to prevent further oil price slide; oil ministers from Saudi Arabia and other major Gulf producers will discuss efforts to bolster crude prices when they gather in Damascus at the weekend for am Arab energy conference.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is set to launch "the world's biggest waterfront project" aiming to stem the outflow of billions of dollars spent by Gulf tourists in the West each year. For between one million and ten million dollars, nationals of the oil-rich Gulf Arab monarchies can buy their own luxury villa on the Red Sea, each with private mooring facilities for yachts. Al Buhairat City (City of Lakes in Arabic) covers 400 hectares (990 acres) just north of Jeddah.
DAMASCUS: Oil output cut not imminent: Opec Secretary General Rilwan Lukman said no production cuts were expected prior to knowing the impact of last March overall oil production cuts on the world oil markets.
WILLIAMSBURG: Daley voices concern about Asia: US Commerce Secretary William Daley said on Saturday he does not believe an expected surge in imports from financially troubled Asia will have much of an impact on US jobs. But he remained cautious about Asia's ability to work through the financial crisis that has ravaged the region's former economic tigers.
LONDON: Japanese Finance Minister Hiharu Matsunaga said Saturday that he considered Japan's current low interest rates "appropriate." Bank of Japan deputy governor Yagamuchi said Thursday that a further cut in the country's already historically low 0.5 per cent official discount rate would better help the ailing economy.
ISLAMABAD: Power firms to cut tariff: About half of some 20 power projects operated by foreign and domestic private companies have agreed to reduce electricity tariff.
KUWAIT: Kuwait's stock exchange powered ahead for the second consecutive week, climbing 5.4 per cent following last week's gain of 6.6 per cent. KSE's index rose to 2,338 on the back of strong confidence in the new Kuwaiti government's plans to boost the country's economy.
Elsewhere in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia's NCFEI All Index continued its steady upward progress, rising for the fourth week running to reach 181.76, a weekly rise of 1.9%. The strong performance of the region's largest bourse was attributed to interest in banking and industrial shares, and to the positive results from SABIC, which accounts for 20% of market capitalization.
The Qatar DSM index remained unchanged, Bahrain's BSE Index edged up 0.3 per cent and the Omani MSM Index fell 2.6%. The fall of the MSM, which is down nearly 18% this year, was blamed on a liquidity shortage in the stock market.
North Africa's stock markets had a mixed week, with Morocco's CSE Index posting the strongest performance with a rise of two per cent on the back of strong trading in banking shares.
CAIRO: G-15 ministers discuss Asia crisis, world trade; plan to set up union to boost trade, investment: Ministers from the G-15 group of developing countries met in Cairo on Saturday to discuss the lessons of the Asian financial crisis and try to rally their combined forces in world trade talks. The G-15 includes Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Senegal, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Kenya was admitted last year.
Violence in Indonesia has complicated efforts to reach an agreement between Indonesia and its creditor banks in Tokyo where they ended a second day of negotiations on Saturday to reschedule $80 billion in private-sector debt.
Malaysia has been badly hit by a sharp fall in its stock market and ringgit currency since the regional turmoil erupted last July.
Low world crude prices are squeezing oil producers such as Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela, Egypt and Algeria, which recently said its 1998 government revenue would be cut by nearly $1.2 billion as a result.
Zimbabwe is trying to shake off the effect of currency turmoil and resurgent inflation which swept the southern African country last year.
Argentina has been struggling to rein in a widening trade deficit which has endangered its loan program with the IMF.
The Brazilian government's attempts to curb a ballooning budget deficit suffered a blow on Wednesday when the lower house of Congress rejected a key pension reform bill.
SEOUL: US auto giant Ford Motor Co. is seeking to form an international consortium to take over ailing South Korean car maker Kia Motors Corp. Ford is the largest shareholder of Kia with a stake of 16.9 per cent.
BEIJING: China seeks foreign investment: A shortage of capital to fund China's ambitious aviation growth has forced the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) to look to expanding foreign investment. The director general of CAAC, Xinghua, said that they were considering the necessity of raising the ratio of foreign investment in domestic airlines from 35 to 40%. The final decision is likely to be made in the second half of this year.
SHANGHAI: Shanghai's economic growth rate dropped by 5.2 percentage points in the first three months of the year compared to the same period last year. Affected by sluggish market demand and financial crisis in southeast Asian countries, the municipal industrial output growth rate dropped by 5.2 percentage points to 8.3% and its exports registered the lowest growth rate of only 4.3%.
AMMAN: RJ to sell 5 Tristars: Jordan's state airline has signed an initial accord to sell its five Tristars (Lockheed L1011) to US carrier American Trans Air to alleviate debt servicing and modernise its fleet for future privatisation.
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