Asian stocks recoup losses set off by Dubai debt crisis

Asian stocks recovered Monday after the steep sell-off last week over the Dubai debt

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crisis. There was growing speculation that the fallout from a potential default would be limited, and assurances from various authorities helped calm nerves.

Banking shares, which bore the brunt of the selling Friday on worries about banks’ exposure to Dubai World and the property group Nakheel, were at the forefront of the rebound Monday in Asia.

‘‘I think it’s going to be okay. At the end of the day, Dubai and Abu Dhabi need each other. And there will be a lot of pressure on Abu Dhabi to step in, from the neighboring countries,’’ said Mark Mobius, a fund manager at Templeton Asset Management.

Hong Kong shares, which posted their biggest single-day loss in eight months Friday, and stocks in Japan, which ended last week at a four-month low, were among the strongest performers in the region Monday.

HSBC Holdings and Standard Chartered, which plunged to multiweek lows Friday, recovered about half of those losses with gains of more than 4 percent each, leading the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong to a 3.3 percent jump.

The Nikkei average in Japan gained 2.9 percent as the yen’s fall from a 14- year high against the dollar also lifted exporters.

Key indexes in Australia and South Korea rose more than 2 percent, while gains in India and Taiwan were above 1 percent.

South Korean markets have been especially sensitive to international financial instability mainly because the highly leveraged local banking system is heavily exposed to the global credit market situation. Deputy Finance Minister Hur Kyung-wook said the government would maintain a daily monitoring system until the Dubai situation had been resolved.

Indonesia’s central bank deputy governor said the country was not expecting to feel any fallout from Dubai’s debt problems, and the Philippine central bank governor said the crisis was not seen as having a major effect on remittances fromthe Filipino diaspora. About a tenth of the Philippines’ 91 million people work abroad, and their remittances are vital to domestic spending.

But stocks with particular exposure to Dubai continued to suffer.

Those included DBS Group and City Developments of Singapore, which pulled the Straits Times index down more than 1 percent; the Indonesian property firm PT Bakrieland Development; and LCL Corp. of Malaysia.

The MSCI index of Asia-Pacific stocks traded outside Japan rose more than 2.5 percent, recouping much of the Friday losses. The regional gauge has gained more than 60 percent this year and is well on course for its best year since an 80 percent jump in 1993.

Stocks dropped in the United Arab Emirates, trading for the first time since the call for a delay in repaying billions of dollars in debt, with Dubai’s index down by 7 percent and Abu Dhabi’s share benchmark 8 percent lower.

The yen weakened across the board after Japan’s strategy minister, Naoto Kan, said the government had agreed to take measures that would stem the yen’s appreciation. He did not specify what measures Tokyo would take.

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