Financial News

The equity market at the Malta Stock Exchange rallied yesterday as investors continued to purchase equities in the larger capitalised companies.

Maltacom shares continued to rally and immediately opened on a high note. In no time the price had rallied up to the Lm1.59c8 level before settling back to close at Lm1.56c. During the day a total of 32,284 shares, having a market consideration in excess of Lm51,000, changed hands across 32 transactions.

Irrational exuberance seems to be surrounding Lombard Bank shares as the price moves further north to its fourth consecutive record high on very low volume. In fact only 113 shares were exchanged today with the price closing at the Lm7.00 level.

Bank of Valletta shareholders enjoyed a positive start to the week as the Lm5.50 resistance level was quickly breached and shares registered an 8c or 1.4 per cent gain to a new record closing high of Lm5.58.

Initial buying activity saw the price of HSBC Bank Malta move higher by 4c to trade at the Lm6.26 level, where the lion's share of the 4,787 shares traded throughout the entire session where exchanged. However sellers left it till late to commence offloading shares and the price ended the day unchanged at Lm6.22.

Datatrak Holdings was the day's biggest gainer as 1,500 shares were exchanged across a single transaction at the Lm0.32c5 level.

Bourses climb to new long-term highs

Europe's shares climbed to long-term highs yesterday encouraged by bid talk in the telecoms and retail pharmacy sectors and a positive end to last week on Wall Street.

The FTSE Eurofirst 300 gained 0.6 per cent to 1,236.21, a 41-month high, with the Xetra Dax in Frankfurt up 0.4 per cent to 5,065.91, the CAC-40 in Paris 0.6 per cent ahead at 4,626.11 and the FTSE 100 up 0.5 per cent to 5,502.1, a 50-month high.

Boots, the British pharmacy group and high street rival Alliance UniChem said yesterday they would merge to create a 2,600-store healthcare giant with sales in excess of £13 billion.

Boots climbed 4.7 per cent to 637p and Alliance UniChem added 3.6 per cent to 897p.

The Tankan business survey in Japan came in lower than expected pushing the Nikkei 225 Average lower and weakening the yen against the dollar to a 16-month low of Y114.20. The Nikkei 225 closed down 0.4 per cent at 13,525.28. However, the broader Topix, ended down only 0.1 per cent at 1,411.28.

Wall Street tacked on gains slowly over the past week in the face of uncertainties over the impact of hurricanes Rita and Katrina and achieved their first September advances in seven years. All the main US equity indices finished the week, and the third quarter, with respectable gains in spite of Friday's news that consumer spending fell an unexpectedly steep 0.5 per cent in August, the biggest drop since November.