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| - Most European stock markets edged higher Friday despite steep losses in Asia, as the financial sector was boosted by news that Spanish banks Bankia and CaixaBank were mulling a merger. In mid-afternoon deals, Madrid stocks rallied by 1.0 percent, while Paris added 0.3 percent and London showed a gain of 0.6 percent. Frankfurt was the outlier, with the DAX index down by 0.5 percent. In New York, the Dow Jones index inched up by 0.1 percent in early trading after the US Labor Department said that the unemployment rate fell to 8.4 percent in August, in large part owing to temporary hiring for the national census. Late Thursday, Spanish savings conglomerate Bankia said in a statement that it had made contact with CaixaBank "with a view to a potential merger", but that no agreement had yet been reached. The deal would create a Spanish banking titan, with more than 650 billion euros ($770 billion) of assets, in a sector battered by the effect of the coronavirus on the wider economy. The news sent Bankia stocks rocketing 26.7 percent to 1.31 euros and CaixaBank surging 14.5 percent to 2.08 euros in afternoon trading on Friday. The combined group would be Spain's third largest lender after Santander and BBVA -- whose share prices also chalked up solid gains. Elsewhere, Asian markets fell deep into negative territory following painful losses Thursday on Wall Street, where the tech sector finally succumbed to profit-taking after months of mind-boggling gains. The drop had been expected after the Nasdaq climbed around 80 percent from its March trough, with analysts warning that valuations were out of sync with economic realities. Meanwhile, closely-tracked US jobs numbers showed that the economy is continuing to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, as it added 1.4 million jobs in August, broadly in line with analysts' forecasts. US employment is nonetheless still well below where it was in February, and some economists warned that without census hiring, the August report was actually weaker than it appeared. The government has hired nearly 600,000 workers in the past two months. London - FTSE 100: UP 0.6 percent at 5,884.66 points Frankfurt - DAX 30: DOWN 0.5 percent at 12,992.67 Paris - CAC 40: UP 0.3 percent at 5,026.50 Madrid - IBEX 35: UP 1.0 percent at 7,074.70 EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 0.1 percent at 3,301.94 New York - Dow: UP 0.1 percent at 28,322.93 Tokyo - Nikkei 225: DOWN 1.1 percent at 23,205.43 (close) Hong Kong - Hang Seng: DOWN 1.3 percent at 24,695.45 (close) Shanghai - Composite: DOWN 0.9 percent at 3,355.37 (close) Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1796 from $1.1852 at 2100 GMT on Thursday Dollar/yen: UP at 106.46 yen from 106.19 yen Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3198 from $1.3281 Euro/pound: UP at 89.38 pence from 89.23 pence Brent North Sea crude: DOWN 1.3 percent at $43.49 per barrel West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 1.4 percent at $40.79 burs-rfj/wai/spm
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