Asian stocks
Beijing, China (BBN)- Asian markets are mostly lower after activity in China’s manufacturing sector shrank for the first time in more than two years.
The official Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to 49.8 in January, its second consecutive monthly decline,reports BBC.
The Shanghai Composite index fell more than 2.2% to 3,138.04 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index lost 0.6% to 24,356.87.
Over in Japan, the benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.8% to 17,531.72 points.
“With the Chinese economy facing headwinds from weaker European demand and disinflation, we see rising pressure for more stimulus measures, such as liquidity injections, interest rate cuts or reserve requirement ratio (RRR) cuts,” Chang Weiliang from Mizuho Bank said.
South Korea was bucking the downward trend, however, rising 0.15% to 1,952.11.
Its stock market is now bigger than Australia’s for the first time in eight years.
The benchmark Kospi now holds a 1.88% share of the global market capitalisation of indexes, compared to Sydney’s 1.85%.
STOCK MOVERS
The Hong Kong-listed shares of China Minsheng Bank have plunged by more than 9% after its president Mao Xiaofeng suddenly resigned for “personal reasons”.
Mr Mao had been the subject of local media reports saying he is under investigation by anti-corruption officials.
China’s largest privately-owned bank said its operations were unaffected by Mr Mao’s departure and that the board chairman had taken over his duties.
Meanwhile, troubled property developer Kaisa has lost its chief executive, just weeks after its chairman and chief financial officer left the company.
In a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange, Kaisa said CEO Jin Zhigang had resigned “to devote more time to his personal career development”.
BBN/SK/AD-2Feb15-11:10am (BST)