HONG KONG: Asian stock markets were mostly down Tuesday, tracking a drop on Wall Street as a tumble in Japanese business confidence and new signs of a China slowdown underlined worries in the region. Those concerns deepened on news that HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, and other major lenders faced heavy exposure to the alleged US$50 billion pyramid scheme said to have been run by one of the biggest names in US investing.
Tokyo was down 0.65 per cent, while Hong Kong was off 0.9 per cent and Sydney lost 1.3 per cent in early trade. Taiwan’s main index was 1.3 per cent lower, while New Zealand bucked the trend, up 0.65 per cent.
While some dealers thought the pre-Christmas lull was kicking in, sentiment was affected by the seemingly endless string of bad news coming out of the United States.
HSBC said it had exposure of about US$1 billion, while Europe’s second-biggest bank Santander said it had a US$3 billion exposure to Madoff Invest Securities.
Fortis Bank Netherlands said it could lose US$1 billion from the alleged scam, even though it had no direct exposure to Madoff’s company.
European shares dropped Monday on the news, with the CAC 40 in France off 0.87 per cent and the Dax in Frankfurt down 0.18 per cent. London’s FTSE 100 was flat, off 0.07 per cent.
In the United States, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.75 per cent while the Nasdaq tumbled 2.1 per cent.
The woes mounted Monday as Japan’s central bank said business confidence had suffered its sharpest drop in three decades.
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