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World: News You Don’t Want to Miss [11-Oct-2011]

By BusinessNews Staff on October 11, 2011

Asian markets were mostly up in overnight trading with the Hang Seng up 2.4%, as a unit of China’s sovereign wealth fund boosted holdings of four huge Chinese lenders. As markets await Solvakia’s vote on the EFSF, Europe is lower and U.S. futures are moderately lower ahead of the open.

The Slovakian parliament is voting today on the expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). Prime minister Iveta Radicova has linked the vote on expanding the EFSF, to a confidence vote on her government. If the vote fails, she expects another round of voting. If the government loses the confidence vote, Slovakia’s President will appoint an interim cabinet.

ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet said Europe’s debt crisis has become “systemic” and moved from smaller economies to some of the larger ones. Meanwhile, European leaders pushed back a debt-crisis summit as opposition mounted to Germany’s demand for deeper-than-planned writedowns on Greek bonds.

UK manufacturing fell 0.3% in August, from the previous month, when it slipped 0.2%. This was the third monthly decline in manufacturing and numbers came in worse than expected. The decline was led by wood and paper products, basic metals and metal products. Overall industrial production fell 1% from a year ago.

Annual inflation in Greece rose to 3.1% in September, from 1.7% the previous month, and was up 3.3% month-over-month. Greece is already in a recession and today demonstrators barricaded the general accounting office and the interior ministry, protesting austerity measures.

The U.S. Senate is expected to approve its controversial China currency bill today, which seeks to tax imports from countries that manipulate their currency. Meanwhile China’s government news agency Xinhua likened the legislation to protectionism that exacerbated the Great Depression, and warned of a trade war.

America’s largest aluminum producer Alcoa Inc. kicks off the earnings season, when it reports earnings after the market closes today. Expectations are for net income of $0.23 per share compared with $0.09 per share a year ago.

Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has restored services after a major outage for users across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. An error at a RIM data center in Slough reportedly caused the outage.

JAVIER HERNANDEZ is a shock £30million target for Real Madrid. The Spanish giants have put the Manchester United striker top of their wanted list. But boss Alex Ferguson is desperate to keep the 23-year-old Mexican at Old Trafford.

South Korean PPI rose 5.7% year-on-year, its slowest pace in 9-months and down from a 6.6% increase in August. The decline was attributed to a drop in food prices, and the Seoul Composite was up 1.62% today. Meanwhile, Indonesia’s central bank unexpectedly cut its interest rate for the first time in two years, to 6.5%.

BONUS – Anzhi Makhachkala set to offer Ashley Cole £200k a week. Anzhi — backed by billionaire owner Suleyman Kerimov — have already handed Samuel Eto’o a monster £350,000-a-week deal