Nikkei Touches 10,000 First Time Since August as Greece Clinches Debt Deal

Nikkei Touches 10,000 First Time Since August as Greece Clinches Debt Deal

Japanese shares rose for a second day, with the Nikkei 225 Stock Average touching 10,000 for the first time since August, as Greece completed the biggest sovereign-debt restructuring in history and the yen slipped against the euro.

Sony Corp. (6758), which depends on Europe for more than a fifth of its sales, climbed 4.3 percent. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., Japan’s top publicly traded bank, gained 2.4 percent on optimism Greece would avoid default. Nippon Steel (5401) Corp. and other makers of the material rose as confidence in the global economic recovery gained momentum.

The Nikkei 225 (NKY) rose 1.7 percent to 9,929.74 at the 3 p.m. close in Tokyo, with a weekly gain of 1.6 percent. The gauge outperformed every other major Asian equity index today, reaching as high as 10,007.62 with volume 60 percent higher than the 10-day average. The broader Topix Index (TPX)gained 1.5 percent to 848.71. It has risen 11 percent since March 2009, the bottom of the global equities slump that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holding Inc.

source: bloomberg.com