HONG KONG — Asian stocks mostly drifted lower Monday as investors grew cautious ahead of a critical European Union summit later this week where Greek leaders will attempt to renegotiate some terms of the country's international bailout.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index was 0.1 percent
lower at 8,785.10 and South Korea’s Kospi slid 1.7 percent to 1,816.11.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was flat at 18,998.78 as it fluctuated between
gains and losses. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was down 1.2 percent at
3,999.40.
Mainland China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell as did benchmarks in Singapore and Taiwan.
Investor
pessimism about the state of the world economy prevailed even as the
leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Spain agreed over the weekend to
push for a growth package worth up to €130 billion ($163 billion) at the
European Union summit scheduled for June 28-29 in Brussels. The meeting
is aimed at kick-starting the economy and safeguarding the currency
bloc.
The summit will prove a key test of Greek leaders’ pledges
to loosen the terms of the country’s bailout. Greece’s new government
said on the weekend it would seek to repeal some taxes, halt layoffs and
extend a deadline for tough austerity measures by two years. But
Germany, the biggest single contributor to the bailout, says Athens must
stick to the current targets.
Previous summits and meetings have
failed to deliver a “credible set of solutions to the Eurozone crisis,”
strategists at Credit Agricole CIB said, so “markets are likely to
remain relatively range bound ahead of the summit.”
On Wall Street
on Friday, stock markets bounced back. The Dow Jones industrial average
gained 67.21 to close at 12,640.78. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index
0.7 percent to 1,335.02 and the Nasdaq composite index climbed 1.1
percent to 2,892.42.
Benchmark crude was up 22 cents to $78.98 in
electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract
settled at $79.76 a barrel on Friday.
In currencies, the euro
slipped to $1.2533 to from $1.2561 in late trading Friday. The dollar
fell to 80.28 Japanese yen from 80.45 yen.
