Financial news

During yesterday's trading session at the Malta Stock Exchange, investors focused their attention mainly on banking shares and sovereign debt.

Before the session opened, Malta International Airport announced that the government would be offering its second tranche of shares at the Lm1.40 level. The market reacted with a marked delay, as 8,548 shares were purchased across four transactions at Lm1.40, towards the very end of the session.

Lombard Bank shares shot up to a new record high as two investors swapped 1,158 shares among them at the Lm6.73 level. Lombard Bank shares have rallied sharply over the past few months as a sellers' strike has caused a liquidity crunch.

HSBC Bank Malta tumbled two per cent as bids failed to catch up with last week's gain. Activity was particularly low, with just 2,696 shares, having a market consideration of less than Lm17,000, being exchanged across eight transactions. The absolute majority of the day's trades were sale orders that hit a weak bid side forcing the price to lose 13c and close at Lm6.22.

Trading in Bank of Valletta shares was much steadier although here too, volume was relatively weak. During the session 2,530 shares changed hands without altering the previous closing price of Lm5.48,5.

Elsewhere, the market failed to respond to Middlesea Insurance's healthy interim results which saw the company increase its interim pre-tax profits by 39.7 per cent to Lm2.1 million.

Tokyo shares slip on profit-taking

European equities gave back some of the previous session's gains yesterday after a lacklustre close on Wall Street followed a late recovery for crude oil prices. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 was down 0.2 per cent at 1,219.74, while Frankfurt's Xetra Dax fell 0.5 per cent to 4,973.13. In Paris, the CAC 40 was 0.4 per cent lower at 4,549.29, but London's FTSE 100 climbed 0.2 per cent to 5,462.9. A bullish trading update from mobile phone company 02 helped London equities to a fresh four-year high yesterday.

Crude oil prices recovered some poise in late trade on Monday as speculators bet on a slow recovery of US production output, driving Nymex West Texas Intermediate back above $66 a barrel. This led to stocks on Wall Street paring their gains, leaving the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.2 per cent to 10,443.63 and the Nasdaq Composite up 0.2 per cent to 2,121.46.

Tokyo shares finished slightly lower yesterday as investors took profits after the market reached fresh four-year highs in the previous session. The benchmark Nikkei 225 average was down 0.6 per cent to 13,310.04, while the broader Topix index was 0.7 per cent lower at 1,376.70.

Share of steelmakers and banks bucked the downward trend, on optimism that next Monday's Tankan survey will show that confidence among Japan's large manufacturers has picked up.