Japan stock market week to Aril 21, 2008

Tokyo rallied in the week to April 21. The Nikkei 225 surged 6.0%, to recover the 13,600 level, the highest in the past seven weeks, by close, while the Topix index was up 6.8%. The market's rebound seems to have been caused by factoring in anticipated weak earnings prospects of Japanese companies in the fiscal year ending March 2009. Investors bought back domestic demand-oriented stocks including real estate and financials. The stabilized yen rate also encouraged investors. The pharmaceutical index was up 3.5% but underperformed the market.

Takeda gained back the previous week's loss and advanced 9.0%, likely reflecting investor recognition that the shares were over-sold on the previous week's news of the acquisition of US firm Millennium Pharma (Marketletter April 14). The share performance was also aided by a report that equity income in the first quarter from TAP, the joint venture with Abbott that is being disbanded (Marketletter March 31), was down 30.5% year-on-year to $102.0 million as expected. Turnover of the anti-ulcer drug Prevacid (lansoprazole) fell 4.0% to $550.0 million and sales of the anti-prostate cancer Lupron (leuprorelin) dropped 11.0% to $147.0 million as expected.