Nikkei, other Asian markets open higher


NTT DoCoMo and KDDI were higher in early trade Monday, but Japan Telecom dipped more than 2 percent

TOKYO, Japan -- Tokyo stocks were narrowly higher in early trade Monday, as gains by Japan Airlines and Asahi Bank offset economic weakness and corporate earnings worries.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 average was up 0.21 percent or 21.8 points at 10,237.51 while the capital-weighted TOPIX index was flat, virtually unchanged at 1030.54.

Other markets in the region were also higher, with Australia's S&P/ASX200 up 4.5 points to 3290.5 on the emphatic third-term victory by John Howard's conservative Liberal-National coalition government at the weekend.

New Zealand's Top 40 index was up 0.37 percent to 1965.53, while in Seoul, the Kospi was up 0.6 percent or 3.57 points to 580.32.

The strength in the region followed a slightly higher close Friday in the U.S. by both the Dow Jones industrial average (up 0.2 percent) and the Nasdaq composite, which just sneaked into the black with a gain of 0.04 percent.

In Japan, Asahi Bank was the most-heavily traded share on the TSE's first section.

Asahi Bank jumps 10 percent

It jumped 10.87 percent or 10 yen to 102 after it said over the weekend that it plans to trim bad loans by roughly 200 billion yen ($1.66 billion) in two years through a tie-up with U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs.

"This may be good for Asahi, but it doesn't change weak economic fundamentals and the fact that no viable policy concerning the sour-loan dilemma has emerged from the government," said Hidenori Karaki, equities general manager at Tokyo Mitsubishi Personal Securities.

Japan Airlines Co Ltd (JAL), Japan's number-one carrier, firmed more than 5 percent to 301 yen, on a weekend report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun that it and third-largest Japan Air System Co Ltd have reached a basic agreement to merge their operations under a holding company to be set up as early as next autumn.

Japan Air System was up 7.16 percent at 3,890 yen

Japan Telecom Ltd slid 2.2 percent to 399,000 yen following a report the No.3 telecoms carrier may barely break even or post a parent-only current loss of around 2.0 billion yen in the year ending in March.

Japan Telecom, which declined to comment on the report, previously forecast a 7.5 billion yen current profit on a parent-only basis for the year.

Mobile phone leader NTT DoCoMo was up 2 percent to 1.49 million yen.

The Cabinet Office said before the open of trade on Monday that Japan's gross domestic product for the April-June quarter shrank by a real 0.7 percent from the previous quarter, rather than the 0.8 percent fall in the initial estimate.

Traders said the numbers underlined the softness of the domestic economy.

Reuters contributed to this report.