HONG KONG - Stock markets across the Asia-Pacific region closed lower today, with significant declines in major indices such as Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index, which fell by 1.9%, and Japan's Nikkei 225, dropping by 1.4%. In Hong Kong, Lenovo Group (OTC:LNVGY) suffered a sharp decline, plummeting over 10% and marking the day's most significant drop. Despite the broader market downturn, there were pockets of resilience with Li Ning gaining 2.7% and Galaxy Entertainment Group (OTC:GXYEF) rising by 1.3%.
In Japan, technology stocks notably influenced the market's direction. Advantest Corp led the losses among the Nikkei constituents with a decrease of 6.2%. Conversely, CyberAgent bucked the trend, topping the gainers' list with an increase of 2.7%. Other significant movements included Renesas Electronics falling by over 5% while Toppan Holdings climbed by more than two percent.
Shifting to Australia, despite the Reserve Bank's decision to hold interest rates, the ASX200 fell by 0.89% to close at 7,061. The Australian dollar was traded at 65.76 US cents. Commodity and cryptocurrency prices also made headlines with gold standing at $2,050 US/oz and Bitcoin being noted at $63,190 AUD.
Corporate news also played a role in influencing investor sentiment. Shares of Origin climbed above $8, Cochlear approached $280, and Pro Medicus ascended to $89.25. Westpac edged up to $21.42 even amid an eight-hour service outage that affected its operations. Whispir surged to 54.5¢ following Pendula's takeover bid announcement. On a less positive note, Mesoblast (NASDAQ:MESO) saw its shares plummet over 22% after pricing its equity raising at a discount.
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