Asia report: Markets higher as oil price rises, Takata goes over brink
Markets in Asia were higher by end-of-play on Monday, with oil price gains putting some wind up the region’s freckle, while Takata filed for bankruptcy as had been widely rumoured in the previous week.
AUD/USD
$0.6573
05:54 08/05/24
GBP/NZD
NZD2.0846
05:53 08/05/24
Hang Seng
18,446.57
10:35 07/05/24
Nikkei 225
38,273.87
09:30 07/05/24
USD/JPY
¥155.1165
05:54 08/05/24
Japan’s Nikkei 225 managed gains of 0.1%, finishing at 20,153.35, while the yen pulled back from its weekend strength against the greenback, last falling away 0.3% to JPY 111.61.
Embattled airbag maker Takata had filed for bankruptcy in both Japan and the US, reports confirmed on Monday, in the latest chapter of its faulty products saga.
Faulty airbags fitted to cars were linked to at least 17 fatalities, leading to the largest ever product recall in the automobile industry.
Takata shares were suspended from trade in Tokyo, and were set to be delisted from the exchange on 27 July.
Nissan and Toyota were among the carmakers to comment on the Takata bankruptcy, claiming the latest development could make it hard to claw back the high cost of the car recalls.
Toyota shares were off 0.38%, while Nissan was 0.19% ahead.
Also in Japan, ailing technology conglomerate Toshiba was down 3.12%, after the firm was downgraded to the second tier of the Tokyo exchange from the first tier.
The company was still stuck in an extremely long tunnel, filled with accounting scandals, failed US nuclear acquisitions and cash crises, but analysts were hopeful there was light somewhere at the end.
“We get the impression that the sale of the memory business opens a path to the resolution of the excess debt problem,” noted Citi analysts Kota Ezawa and Takero Fujiwara.
“While nothing can be taken for granted … we did detect a sense of progress.”
Toshiba last week selected a Japanese state-backed consortium as its preferred bidder for its valuable memory chip division, though it was facing a legal stumbling block from its manufacturing plant joint venture partner Western Digital, which had also wanted a piece of the Toshiba chip business.
On the mainland, the Shanghai Composite was 0.89% ahead at 3,186.05, while the smaller, technology-heavy Shenzhen Composite finished solidly ahead by 1.36% at 1,896.79.
South Korea’s Kospi was up 0.42% at 2,388.66, while the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong closed ahead 0.79% at 25,871.89.
Volumes were lighter across many of the region’s markets, with a dearth of releases giving traders little reason to be energetic.
“The start of the week sees only secondary data releases and scarce corporate news, meaning there is little to rock the market boat,” noted CMC Markets chief market strategist Michael McCarthy.
Oil prices were higher as the greenback weakened, with Brent crude last up 0.22% at $45.64 per barrel and West Texas Intermediate adding 0.44% to $43.20.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 added 0.08% to finish at 5,720.16, with the utilities and consumer staples subindexes underpinning the benchmark.
Rio Tinto finished the Sydney session 1.26% higher, as traders there had a chance to respond to Glencore’s move on Friday to raise its offer for the company’s coal assets.
The vendor had earlier said it was selecting a bid from Chinese-owned Yancoal.
Across the Tasman Sea, New Zealand’s S&P/NZX 50 was up 0.6% at 7,595.50, led higher by fuel refiner and retailer Z Energy, which added 2.4%, while telco Spark was 2.3% higher.
Local subscription broadcaster Sky - unrelated to its London-listed namesake - was down 2.1% after it jointly announced with Vodafone’s New Zealand arm that they wouldn’t take their merger agreement to the appeals stage, after their plans were disallowed by the Commerce Commission regulator earlier this year.
The down under dollars were mixed, with the Aussie last 0.11% stronger on the greenback at AUD 1.3202, while the Kiwi weakened 0.14% to NZD 1.3749.