Tech & Biz

Recession reverberations on Asian shares

by cynthia yoo | March 10, 2008 at 02:49 pm

501 views | 4 Recommendations | 4 comments

It's no longer the US sub-prime mess; it's the global credit crunch, and stock exchanges across the world are taking the hit.

Growing concerns about the state of the US economy have taken their toll on share prices in Asia.

Tokyo's Nikkei index closed down 250.7 points or 1.96% at 12,532.1, which was its lowest close since September 2005.

The falls were sparked by US jobs figures on Friday, which showed the biggest monthly fall in employment for five years, and other gloomy US data.

European shares have not followed the Asian falls having already reacted to the US data on Friday.

As well as the Nikkei, other indexes in Asia were in negative territory. The stock market in Shanghai fell by 3.59% to a seven month low on continued inflation worries.

Taiwan's benchmark Taiex index fell 2.7%, which was its biggest fall for six weeks.

Manila fell 4.0%, Seoul lost 2.3%, while Sydney's index fell 1.6% to lowest level since October 2006.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell had fallen 1.5% by the end of the morning session but eventually closed up 0.9%.

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PTsang

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 19:00 on March 10th, 2008

cynthia yoo, I like this story. It's good stuff.

cishore

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 19:53 on March 10th, 2008

cynthia yoo, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Birger Hoppe

at 03:37 on March 11th, 2008

About the photo:

LuJiaZui, PuDong's financial center, one bank tower next to the other. Plus the Shanghai Stock Exchange (the smaller building behind the tower with the double-disk on top), which gets more and more hidden due to new buildings arising around it. The greens across the street in front of the high-rise buildings are part of a small park. A nice place for relaxing.

Worth visiting is a small photo exhibition unter a white sail-like tent: It shows the development of the LuJiaZui area one picture per year. It is incredible how quickly the previous villages have been removed (the space of the current park was occupied by many residential buildings; only one is preserved as cafe and as popular wedding photo location in the eastern corner), new ones built, the tunnel added, and...yes also that...the first new buildings already removed again to make room for even newer ones.

Birger Hoppe has contributed a photo to this story.

cynthia yoo

at 19:03 on March 11th, 2008

Thanks for the post. Were you living in Shanghai or visiting? I visited for a few days last year and I was amazed by the amount of construction and growth.