MARKET ROUNDUP (Source Bloomberg)

U.S. Stocks Drop on Apple Slump as Europe Ministers Meet; following last week's advance in benchmark indexes, after Apple (AAPL)Inc. paced a decline in technology companies and as European finance ministers met to discuss the region's government debt crisis. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index slid 0.3 percent to 1,455.88 at 4 p.m. New York time, after climbing 1.4 percent last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 26.50 points, or 0.2 percent, to 13,583.65. Volume for exchangelisted stocks in the U.S. was 4.1 billion shares, the lowest since July 3.

European Stocks Retreat Most This Month; Cookson Sinks; as the World Bank cut its East Asian growth forecast and investors awaited a meeting of euro-area finance ministers for signs on how they will tackle the debt crisis. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index slipped 0.5 percent, Germany's DAX lost 1.4 percent and France'sCAC 40 (CAC) dropped 1.5 percent.

Oil Drops as WTI-Brent Spread Widens to Most in Year; widening its discount to Brent to the most in almost a year, after the World Bank said a slowdown in China will curb East Asian growth. Crude for November delivery dropped 55 cents to settle at $89.33 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.Prices are down 9.6 percent this year. Surging output from shale-rock formations in the U.S., including the Bakken in North Dakota, and Canada's oil sands has bolstered supplies at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for WTI on the Nymex. Nationwide stockpiles were up 8.4 percent from a year earlier, the Energy Department reported last week.


CORPORATE NEWS

Ingress secures RM51.6mil jobs over 5 years; Ingress said the first project was the supply of heatshield mufflers for Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional Sdn Bhd (Proton), which was secured through its wholly-owned subsidiary Ingress Engineering Sdn Bhd.It said the second one was secured through its Indonesian subsidiary PT Ingress Malindo Ventures for the supply of brackets for PT Asahimas Flat Glass Tbk.

Decline in factory output; Malaysia's manufacturing activity in August is expected to decline to negative growth on weak demand due to a combination of recession and stubbornly high unemployment. Economists expect a median 2% decline in the industrial production index (IPI) for the month compared to a year ago when the Statistics Department releases the data on Thursday.

StarbIz


Hua Yang buys prime land in Puchong; via its wholly-owned subsidiary, Bison Holdings Sdn Bhd, has acquired 11.81ha of a prime land in Puchong from Mentari Hari Sdn Bhd, for a mixed development project worth RM1.52 billion in gross development value (GDV). The company entered a conditional sale-andpurchase agreement with Mentari Hari to acquire five vacant plots of leasehold land in Petaling district, Selangor, for RM158 million.

BIMB gets nod fortalks on Bank Islam buyout; Bank Negara Malaysia's nod to start talks with Dubai Financial Group (DFG) to buy out the latter's 30.5 per cent stake in Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd, the country's largest standalone Islamic lender. BIMB, which holds a 51 per cent stake in Bank Islam told Bursa Malaysia early yesterday that BNM had no objection to the talks taking place

Btimes

Source:Jupiter Securities Research, 9 October 2012