Nikkei and Asian Markets Slide, Yen Hovers Near 6-year Low

Hiruki Nakamura
22 Sep, 2014
New York City

The yen rebounded from its six-year low but market indexes extended losses after shippers, exporters and resource companies led the decliners in Tokyo trading. SoftBank plunged nearly 5% after investors preferred to invest directly in Alibaba Group Holdings.

[R]4:30 PM Tokyo – The yen rebounded from its six-year low but market indexes extended losses after shippers, exporters and resource companies led the decliners in Tokyo trading. SoftBank plunged nearly 5% after investors preferred to invest directly in Alibaba Group Holdings.[/R]

Stocks in Tokyo closed lower after weak commodities prices across Asia dragged market indexes in the region.

Iron ore and coal prices continued to slide and palm oil and other traded commodities extended multi-year decline after crude oil futures edged lower to a two-year low.

The latest round of commodities price declined was driven by the market speculation that China is set to trim economic growth outlook below 7.5% as early as this week.

The Nikkei 225 Stock Average slumped 115.27 or 0.7% to 16,205.90 and the broader Topix index fell 1.03 to 1,330.88.

The yen rebounded from a six-year low of 109 to close at 108.83 against one U.S. dollar.

Stocks in Review

Mitsubishi Corp gained 0.8% to 2,331.50 yen after the trading company offered to buy Norway-based fishery company Cermaq ASA for $1.4 billion to expand the food businesses in Europe.

Mitsubishi Motors Corporation climbed 4% to 1,310 yen after the automobile company singed an agreement to invest approx $600 million to build a new assembly plant in Jakarta, Indonesia with an annual production capacity of 160,000 units and expand to 240,000 units.

Production is expected to commence from first-half of 2017.

The automaker and Italy-based Fiat Group Autombiles SpA teamed up to produce a new mid-size pick-up trucks from 2016.

Mitsubishi Materials Corp jumped 2.6% to 357 yen after the media report metal and construction material producer intends to buy Hitachi Tool Engineering, a unit of Hitachi.

Next Co., Ltd slid 0.2% to 790 yen after the online real estate leasing and sales services provider said total sales in the month of August soared 12.3% to 1.27 billion yen from 1.13 billion yen a year ago month.

The company said sales from real estate information services segment climbed 12.3% to 1.25 billion yen from 1.12 billion yen and sales from rental and real estate trade business surged 16.8% to 710 million yen from 607.6 million yen a year earlier.

SoftBank Corp plunged 6.1% to 8,207 yen even though the communication services provider estimated a gain of about 500 billion yen or $4.6 billion from the Alibaba Group Holding's initial public offerings.

SoftBank was seen as a proxy to Alibaba and investors shifted to invest directly in the e-commerce platform operator after the company completed its listing on New York Stock Exchange.

Separately, chief operating officer Ken Miyauchi of SoftBank said there is no plan to invest in Line Corporation, a text messaging application.