Nikkei in Tokyo Jumps 1.6%, ANA Wins Tokyo Downtown Airport Slots

Hiruki Nakamura
06 Mar, 2014
New York City

Market averages in Tokyo closed higher and the yen eased. The situation in Ukraine appeared to not worsen any more after the European Union cobbled together $15 billion in aid and held out a warning for Russian sanctions. ANA Holdings won 11 new daytime slots from Tokyo downtown airport.

[R]4:30 PM Tokyo – Market averages in Tokyo closed higher and the yen eased. The situation in Ukraine appeared to not worsen any more after the European Union cobbled together $15 billion in aid and held out a warning for Russian sanctions. ANA Holdings won 11 new daytime slots from Tokyo downtown airport.[/R]

Market averages in Tokyo closed higher after European Union offered $15 billion in emergency aide to Ukraine’s unelected and interim government.

The hopes of easing of tensions between Russia and Ukraine lifted markets in Asia but the aide offered to Ukraine was less than half request.

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin offered cautious sounding comments but foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov did not participate in an U.S. led effort to mediate an accord with the EU.

Tensions in the region eased for now, but situation remained tentative and the European Union set the deadline for Russia to leave Crimea or face financial and economic sanctions.

Russia, also ended discounted sale of natural gas to Ukraine and Gazprom demanded $2 billion.

The Nikkei 225 Stock Average climbed 237.12 or 1.6% to 15,134.75 and the Topix index jumped 15.46 to 1,228.36.

The yen increased 0.3% to 102.72 against the U.S. dollar.

Stocks in Review

Toyota Motor Corp advanced 107 yen to 5,869 yen. Honda Motor Co jumped 64 yen to 3,796 yen. Nissan Motor Co Ltd added 0.4% to 906 yen.

Sony climbed 42 yen to 1,825 yen.

Softbank Corp soared 368 yen to 7,959 yen. Fast Retailing Co increased 675 yen to 37,650 yen.

ANA Holdings Inc. rose 0.4% to 229 yen after the airline won bidding for international flight slots and won 11 new daytime slots from Haneda airport located in Tokyo downtown at the end of March.

ANA will surpass the 5 slots held by Japan Airlines.

ANA projected net income from Haneda flights from 60 billion yen in the year to March 2017.

Kumiai Chemical Industry Co. Ltd soared 8.4% to 594 yen after the Japan-based company chemical products maker reported sales in the first-quarter jumped 5.2% to 16.35 billion yen from 9.55 billion yen a year ago.

Profit in the quarter doubled to 1.73 billion yen from 875 million yen a year earlier.

Rakuten Inc fell 0.8% to 1,420 yen after the Japan-based online retailer plans to expand to 2 billion users with acquisition of messaging service Viber Media Inc based in Cyprus and operated by Israel based company.