FA Notes Thursday October 27, 2011
Top European Central Bank officials offered a skeptical appraisal of Europe’s latest plan to solve its debt crisis, suggesting that the central bank may be forced to maintain the emergency measures it has adopted to keep the problems from spreading.
The ECB purchased Spanish and Italian government bonds on Thursday, a trader said, hours after European leaders inked a three-pronged deal they hope will solve the region’s debt crisis through a mix of Greek debt restructuring, bank recapitalizations and leverage of Europe’s bailout fund to give it extra firepower. Details still need to be ironed out, which could take weeks.
Despite the show of support from the ECB, Italian government-bond yields fell only modestly Thursday, suggesting investors still have doubts about whether the package will ultimately work. Link
“Companies have recently raised prices for their external hard drives by 10-20%, amid speculation that recent flooding in Thailand might cause tight supply for HDDs and related components, according to industry sources… potential HDD and key component shortages might propel demand for solid state drives (SSD) in consumer PCs, the sources indicated.” Link
“Asustek Computer and Gigabyte Technology, facing weak market demand in Europe, the US and China, are expected to fail to achieve their motherboard shipment goals for 2011 and only ship 22 million and 17.5-18 million units, respectively, about one million units less than their original targets” Link