SF: European Stocks Fall With Spanish Bonds; Yen, Soybeans Decline
Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- European stocks fell with Spanish and Italian bonds as the region’s finance ministers prepared to meet to discuss aid to Cyprus and Greece. U.S. equity-index futures gained, the yen weakened and soybeans declined.
The Stoxx Europe 600 Index dropped 0.4 percent at 8:30 a.m. in New York, trimming this year’s gain to 2.4 percent. Novo Nordisk A/S plunged the most in almost four years after failing to win U.S. approval for a new insulin. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures added 0.1 percent. Italy’s 10-year bond yield rose five basis points to 4.60 percent, approaching a two-month high. The yen weakened against all its major peers, falling 1 percent versus the euro. Soybeans declined 1 percent.
European finance chiefs were set to meet in Brussels today as a tightening election contest in Italy and corruption allegations in Spain threaten to reignite the region’s debt crisis. Ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 will gather in Moscow later this week. Haruhiko Kuroda, one of the potential candidates to head the Bank of Japan, said additional monetary easing can be justified this year.
Stocks “were off to the races at the beginning of the year and it was too much to be sustainable,” Frances Hudson, who helps manage about $248 billion as a strategist at Standard Life Investments in London, said in an interview with Francine Lacqua on Bloomberg Television. “Having a nice pause to consolidate is a good thing and allows people to take a more measured approach.”
Equity trading volume was lower than average, with markets in Japan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia closed for public holidays.
Sanofi Gains
Trading of company shares in the Stoxx 600 was 33 percent less than the 30-day average. Novo Nordisk sank 13 percent in Copenhagen. Sanofi, which produces the best-selling Lantus insulin, jumped 4.4 percent in Paris for the biggest gain since November 2011.
Lundin Petroleum AB tumbled 8.7 percent after saying resources in its part of the Johan Sverdrup oil discovery may be toward the low end of previous estimates. Royal Ahold NV advanced 5.1 percent in Amsterdam after agreeing to sell its 60 percent stake in ICA, Sweden’s largest food retailer, to Hakon Invest AB for 20 billion kronor ($3.1 billion).
The S&P 500 has rallied 6.4 percent in 2013 to its highest level since November 2007 as U.S. lawmakers reached a budget compromise and companies reported better-than-estimated earnings. Loews Corp. is one of three companies in the U.S. gauge reporting earnings today.
Italy’s 10-year bond yield approached an eight-week high of 4.63 percent set on Feb. 8. The rate on similar-maturity Spanish debt climbed five basis points to 5.42 percent. U.S. Treasury 10-year yields rose one basis point to 1.97 percent.
Yen Weakens
The yen weakened 0.8 percent to 93.44 per dollar. The euro climbed 0.2 percent to $1.3391, snapping a three-day decline.
“Some additional” measures could be justified for 2013, Kuroda said in an interview in Tokyo today, stressing that he was speaking in his capacity as an economist and chief of the ADB, not as a BOJ contender.
The Group of Seven nations are considering releasing a statement on exchange rates this week to calm concern the world is on the brink of a currency war, three officials from G-7 countries said, before the G-20 meeting.
The S&P GSCI gauge of 24 commodities slid 0.6 percent. Soybeans fell after the U.S. Department of Agriculture raised its estimate of world inventories in a report on Feb. 8. Wheat retreated 0.5 percent and gasoline slumped 0.5 percent. Brent crude slide 0.8 percent and copper retreated 0.7 percent.
The MSCI Emerging Markets Index slipped 0.2 percent as price swings fell to an all-time low amid Lunar New Year holidays. Benchmark gauges in Turkey and Thailand fell at least 0.6 percent. Indonesia’s Jakarta Composite Index rose 0.3 percent to a record, with trading volume 25 percent less than the 30-day average. Russia’s Micex Index gained 0.4 percent, while India’s Sensex slid 0.1 percent.
--With assistance from Adam Haigh in Sydney, Claudia Carpenter, Paul Dobson, Sarah Jones, Andrew Rummer in London. Editors: Stephen Kirkland, Justin Carrigan
To contact the reporters on this story: Stephen Kirkland in London at skirkland@bloomberg.net; Pratish Narayanan in Mumbai at pnarayanan9@bloomberg.net;
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Justin Carrigan at jcarrigan@bloomberg.net
