By James Langton
(March 13 – 10:45 ET) – North American markets all opened deeply down on some aggressive profit-taking in tech stocks. But the indexes are all bouncing off their lows after an hours trading. The TSE currently sits off 118 points at 9,369. The Dow is down 89 points to 9,839. Nasdaq is the hardest hit, down below 5,000 again, currently off 146 points to 4,903. The S&P has dropped 20 points to
1,375.
It was a rough night in Asian markets. Concerns that valuation has gotten out of hand seems to be the problem. There are no economic releases scheduled today that are likely to arrest the momentum.
There will be plenty of key inflation data out this week. And the European Central Bank meets on Thursday. A potential interest rate hike announcement from the ECB is feared.
Asian stocks plunged overnight led by tech stocks. Internet companies such as Softbank Corp. and China Telecom (Hong Kong) Ltd. drove prices down. The Nikkei finished off 560 points to 19,190. The Hang Seng fell harder, closing down 735 points to 17,097.
These results echoed through the European markets and are knocking back S&P futures. The German DAX has taken the hardest hit so far, down 268 points to 7,708. London’s FTSE is off 149 points to 6,420. France’s CAC 40 has dropped 190 points to 6,320.
Although markets appear to be bracing for a big hit today, here are plenty of big deals in the news today too. Mostly notably BCE Inc. has raised its bid for CTV Inc. by 50¢ to $38.50 per share, spurring CTV to accept the offer that will top out at about $2.32 billion. BCE will also buy CTV’s biggest. shareholsder Electrohome Broadcasting Inc. for$270 million.
In other business news bank mergers are back. After last week’s Deutsche-Dresdner tie up, today Japan’s Sanwa Bank Ltd. is looking to make a menage a trois out of an already planned merger of Tokai Bank Ltd. and Asahi Bank Ltd. If it goes ahead the three way will create one of the world’s largest banks.
Aetna Inc. has rejected a US$10 billion takeover offer from ING Groep NV and Wellpoint Health Networks Inc. Instead the firm pledges that it will split itself into its health and financial services arms into two separate publicly-traded companies.