Asia stocks tumble after Japanese quake; Nikkei plunges 6.2%
Investing.com
Published Mar 14, 2011 03:55AM ET
During late Asian trade, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index shed 0.45%, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index slumped 0.40%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index plunged 6.18%.
Deaths from the devastating quake and tsunami were expected to exceed 10,000, and the risk of major radiation from a nuclear-plant meltdown remained a threat Monday, as officials struggled to control damage to its nuclear reactors.
Shares in Tokyo Electric Power Company, operator of the Fukushima nuclear-power plant which suffered an explosion to its No. 3 reactor building following the quake plunged 23.6%.
Oil and gas producers JX Holdings and Cosmo Oil, which had refinery fires following the earthquake, were down 15% and 21.6%, respectively.
Meanwhile, the world’s largest automaker Toyota saw shares drop 7.9%, shares in Nissan plunged 9.5%, while Honda slumped 6.5% after they suspended operations at nearly all their domestic plants until further notice.
Shares in the financial sector were sharply lower, with the nation’s largest lender Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group tumbling 7.2%, while Mizuho Financial Group plummeted 10.5%.
Earlier in the day, the Bank of Japan offered to inject JPY7 trillion of funds to the short-term money market via a same-day operation, the largest ever for such an operation.
Elsewhere, Australia’s largest uranium producer Paladin Energy saw shares plunge 16.5%, while nuclear reactor manufacturer Energy Resources tumbled 12.2% as Japan worked to prevent a meltdown at damaged nuclear reactors.
The outlook for European equity markets, meanwhile, was downbeat. The EURO STOXX 50 futures dropped 0.99%, France’s CAC 40 futures declined 0.83%, the FTSE 100 futures slumped 0.62%, while Germany’s DAX futures pointed to a loss of 1.55%.
Later in the day, the euro zone was to publish official data on industrial production.
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Written By: Investing.com
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