Nikkei: 10,664.70 (–192.83) Hang Seng: 22,990.81 (–494.61) Shanghai Comp: 2,855.96 (–76.29):ASIAN STOCKS slumped to their worst performance in more than a month yesterday, as oil price shocks threw all the region's equity markets into a downward spiral.
Chiyoda, an engineering company that gets almost half of its sales in the Middle East, sank 4.3 per cent to ¥721.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, Japan’s biggest publicly traded bank, declined 3.6 per cent to ¥453 while Sumitomo Mitsui Financial, the second-largest, fell 4.5 per cent to ¥3,050.
Blue chips also fell prey to aggressive profit-taking as the Nikkei 225 halted a run of six days of gains. Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker, lost 2.6 per cent to ¥3,805 while electronics maker Hitachi sank 2.9 per cent to ¥483.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slipped 2.1 per cent to 22,990.81 with developers leading the retreat. Hang Lung Properties, which gets about 84 per cent of its revenue from Hong Kong, dropped 2.3 per cent to HK$32.
New Zealand’s NZX 50 slipped 0.7 per cent to 3,358.70 in the wake of the earthquake natural disaster in Christchurch. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)
