Market briefing---Lane (medium)
Tokyo market---Ron (slow)
>> unilever has agreed to sell the rights to its brut male personal care products to helen of troy. helen of troy will receive $55 million in cash to sell the brand t deal is expected to be complete thd year. unilever is the world’s largest maker of food and soap. it says the transaction with helen of troy will not affect the brand with the rest of the world. it’s part of unilever’s five-year strategy program to focus on bigger selling brands such as dove soap. helen of troy rose as much as 15% today and closed up 10.5%. stock is up more than 100% so far this year. honda motors says it will invest 45 million through next year and hire 200 people to boost its motorbike output in brazil. it plans to increase capacity at that plant to 44% to 1.3 motor bikes a year. japan’s second biggest automaker by sales controls 85% of brazil’s motorbike market. car sales in brazil dropped 8% in the first half of the year, earlier this year honda cut 120 workers from its car plant because of declining sales. ron madison in our tokyo bureau.
>> more signs that the u.s. economy is firmly on its way to recovery as well as the rally we saw in u.s. stocks tuesday may give a boost to japanese stocks today. japanese stocks that trade in the u.s. rose after that i.s.m. factory index increased last month to its highest level since december. now, here is what steve caloano had to say who oversees $30 billion in boston. he says the i.s.m. is another positive for japanese exporters e says those guys are sensitive to u.s. revenues and are going to be higher. looking at the a.d.r.’s, n.e.c., toyota as well as matsushita electric industrial, there you see on your screen all rising in u.s. trading. we’ll be keeping an eye on exporters to see how they react to the rising yen. analysts are saying treasury secretary john snow’s trip to asia may lessen the possibility of intervention by the bank of japan. we are seeing it currently trade in that 1.16 range where we’ve seen the b.o.j. come in and sell the currency. as well, computer chip related shares like toshiba may be active as well. an industry report showed global semiconductor sales rose 11% in july, on higher demand for chips used in personal computers as well as electronics. now, according to the california based semiconductor industry association, it says sales increased to 12.9 billion in july, that compares with the 11.68 billion in sales in the year-satisfying period. lane.
>> ron, you were talking about treasury secretary john snow’s trip to asia. has he been getting his message across that japan and china should stop policies aimed at keeping their exports cheap.
>> a bit of ambiguity. john snow meets with chinese officials for a second day. he told reporters officials did listen to his arguments. comments from the chinese government following the meetings suggested no promises at all were made. on tuesday’s japan’s finance minister shiokawa said japan had to avoid extreme fluctuations in its currency, but he did agree with snow that china should let its currency float freely.
>> i told him that we better give china the message that we should talk more about what kind of benefit china can get if they’d move to a floating exchange rate system. i also told him we need to show china the data to explain our position.
>> some members of the u.s. congress have blamed china for u.s. job losses. some analysts say snow is unlikely to get chinese officials to agree. snow is attending the upcoming asia pacific economic cooperation forum being held in thailand which gets under way on thursday. we will be bringing you live coverage of that event. for today, though, lane, lots will be following, and it very well could be an active day for exporters as well as tech stocks . back to you, lane.
>> ron madison. our global coverage from tokyo continues with bloomberg international live at 6:00 p.m. new york time, 3 the m in california, nine minutes from now.we have upbeat news out of luxury goods retailers.
