Tokyo stocks mixed; techs make gains

TOKYO, Japan -- Tokyo stocks eased by mid-morning Friday, after opening stronger on positive news from Wall Street.

Leading tech stocks such as NEC, Fujitsu and Sony were all up strongly, but not enough to keep the benchmark Nikkei 225 index in positive territory.

After opening at 12,417.56, the Nikkei was down 54.11 points or 0.4 percent to 12,353.84, while the broader Topix was down 3.14 points to 1245.49.

Other markets in the region generally were stronger, building on the strong performance Thursday among U.S. stocks.

Dow, Nasdaq jump sharply

The Dow Jones industrial average closed 2.32 percent at 10,478.99, up 237.97 points, while the Nasdaq composite jumped more than 5 percent to close 103 7 points at 2075.74.

In Australia, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 was up 8.1 points at 3400.7, led by bluechip resource stocks and most of the big banks. Retailers Coles Myer and Woolworths were weaker.

In Seoul, the Kospi was just in positive territory mid-morning, up 0.89 points to 560.84, while Taiwan's Taiex jumped a healthy 55 points to 4689.15.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index also opened higher, putting on more than 100 points to 12,769.53 in mid-morning trade.

Aiful to issue new shares

In Tokyo, among the main movers was Mimasu Semiconductor, which was down 13.14 percent or 180 yen at 1,190, to be the first section's biggest percentage loser.

Shares in the polisher and processor of silicon wafers came under pressure after the Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily said on Thursday that Mimasu's group operating profit would decline 31 percent in the current business year to May 2002 from the forecast figure for the previous year.

The company will announce earnings results and forecasts on Monday. Aiful Corp was down 2.0 percent or 200 yen at 9,800 yen. Japan's fourth-ranked consumer financing company said on Friday it would issue 8.5 million new shares to raise 81.72 billion yen ($658.9 million).

Canon Inc was up 1.56 percent or 70 yen at 4570 yen. Japan's biggest office machine manufacturer and leading semiconductor equipment maker on Thursday revised up its earnings forecast due to the yen's drop, but warned its second-half earnings would be hit by a weak global economy.

Canon now expects a parent current profit of 215 billion yen for the year to December 2001, up 13 percent from the previous forecast.

Reuters contributed to this report.