Ike: Asian business news highlights
Wednesday/Thursday
SINGAPORE: Suharto sparks mild rally in Asian markets; Rupiah, other currencies rise.
WASHINGTON: The US Federal Reserve left short-term interest rates unchanged Tuesday as inflation remained benign, despite solid growth and worries about instability in Indonesia.
LONDON: Euro stocks rally sharply; Yen retreats.
DUBAI: Iran, buffeted by low oil prices, a weak currency and high inflation, will see no early boost to its economy from a waiver of US sanctions on foreign investors in its energy sector. The sharp drop in global prices has slashed Iran's hard earned currency earnings forcing President Mohammad Khatami's government to draft new economic plans based on a forecast oil price of $12 instead of $16.
MOSCOW: Russian blue chips recover: Leading Russian stocks recovered on Tuesday after the government increased interest rates to defend the ruble, and the main RTS index rose by 3.9%. The central bank raised its key refinancing rate to 50 per cent to stop foreig capital from haemorrhaging from Russia's troubled markets.
BANGKOK: Nervous investors run for cover; Thai finance stocks crash 30%: More Thai finance companies are sure to fold this year following the central bank's takeover of seven firms which prompted nervous traders to flee the market.
CAIRO: Microsoft to launch Windows 98 operating system and Arabic internet browsers on schedule in Mideast undeterred by antitrust lawsuits against the company in the US; Microsoft's Egypt marketing manager, Nihal Zaki, said Microsoft's English Windows 98 would be launched on June 25 and the Arabic version of Windows about five months later.
SINGAPORE: Foreigners keep Indonesia business at arm's length: Foreign investors kept business with troubled Indonesia on hold on Tuesday waiting to see whether President Suharto's pledge to step down would restore order to the riot hit country.
PARIS: After a 6 month battle, France's Socialist-led parliament on Tuesday adopts a controversial law enforcing a 35-hour work week that will set the country apart from its European Union partners. For the leftwing government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, the legislation set for passage late Tuesday is the centrepiece o a year-old election pledge to resorb unemployment - which last month fell below the symbolic 3-million-jobless mark but which remains, at 12%, one of the highest in Europe. With growth expected to rise to 3% this year against 2.3% in 1997, and all economic indicators set on green, government forecasters believe the next two years may see creation of around 600,000 jobs, around 100,000 of them due to the shorter working week.
*********************************************************************
JAKARTA: The Indonesian Parliament Wednesday handed embattled President Suharto an ultimatum to resign by Friday, bowing to mounting nationwide protests involving some 200,000 people. The Friday resignation deadline capped yet another day of countrywide anti-rallies, including 12,000 students who occupied parliament for a third day in the face of a massive show of military show.
SINGAPORE: Tokyo, HK, Taipei and Seoul stocks surge and most of the Southeast Asian markets closed higher. Confidence trickled back into Asian markets on Wednesday after opponents of Indonesian President Suharto cancelled a protest march in Jakarta.
LONDON: European stocks hit record highs; US dollar eases against yen: Easing tension in Indonesia boosted stock markets in Asia, Europe and the US on Wednesday, and the yen won at least temporary respite from selling pressure.
WASHINGTON: US trade deficit widens; economy may slow pace: The US international trade deficit swelled 7.0% in March to $13 billion as the nation's trade performance deteriorated across the board, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday in a report suggesting the roaring US economy may slow its pace.
GENEVA: Trading powers and developing nations clinched a deal on Wednesday to keep software and goods delivered on the Internet duty free for at least a year.
SEOUL: A bold move by South Korea's Hyundai Motor to sack nearly a fifth of its workforce poses a test for the country's ambitious corporate restructuring drive. The country's largest carmaker said on Wednesday it plans to dismiss 18 per cent of its 45,000 workers in line with free-falling domestic car sales. Layoffs would begin in June and be completed by the end of the year.
ABU DHABI: Gulf stocks surged by 64% in the last two years while markets in other developing nations recorded only modest growth and Asian exchanges plunged. Market capitalization of shares in the 6-nation GCC soared to some $126 billion at end 1997 from nearly $77 billion at end 1995. The capitalization accounted for 29.6% of the GCC'S GDP at end '97, but the level was as high as 111.6% in Kuwait, which has the busiest stock exchange in the 22-member Arab League. Turnover, the value of traded shares, also sharply expanded, with the monthly average jumping from around one billion dollars in 1995 to $2.2 billion in '96 and about $4.62 billion in 1997.
TOKYO: Slump, Asian fall-out swell Japan's trade gap, trading houses profits dip:
Japan's trade surplus bulged again in April as the faltering domestic economy refused to suck in foreign goods, data showed on Wednesday. Exports fell from year-earlier levels for the first time in 33 months, as crisis-wracked Asian export markets dried up, but that fall was outpaced by a double-digit drop in imports - the fourth decline in a row. The merchandise trade surplus rose an unadjusted 52.6% year-on-year, its 13th rise in a row, to 1.23 trillion yen on a customs-cleared basis. Overall exports dipped about 2% as an 18% slide n exports to Asia outweighed a 19% jump to the European Union and a 7% rise to the United States. Imports from the US fell 5%, pushing the closely watched bilateral surplus up 29 per cent to 5836 billion yen. Chief Asia economist at Lehman Brothers Japan, Russell Jones said he does not expect the April figures themselves to worsen trade friction, because they mark the continuation of established trends and because the United States and other major trade partners are more focused on such issues as Japan boosting domestic demand and avoiding deflation.
Japan's top trading houses said Wednesday that their profits slid in the past year to March, dragged down by Asia's economic crisis and the domestic slump. Although the falling value of the yen pushed up overseas sales through cheap exports, many of the firms felt stock market losses with extra pain.
BRUSSELS: Brussels approves rescue bid: The European Commission on Wednesday approved a new 16-billion-dollar rescue plan for debt-ridden French bank Credit Lyonnais, clearing the way for the biggest ever state bailout of a single company in Europe. The new aid package, the third in three years, is designed to plug gaping holes in Credit Lyonnais' accounts. Without the cash, the bank, which employs 32,000 people would immediately go bankrupt. In return for the commission's approval, CL has agreed to sell off assets worth 310 billion francs ($51.6 bn) lifting to 675 billion francs the total value of disposals imposed on the company by Brussels since 1994. The commission also demanded that the bank reduce its retail network in France by 10% (from 2100 branches to 1850 by the year 2000) and reiterated that the bank must be privatised by October 1999.
Samira |
