Reuters

By Maggie Fick

LONDON (Reuters) -Novo Nordisk raised its 2024 outlook on Thursday and delivered better-than-expected first-quarter profits as the Danish drugmaker races to boost output of its Wegovy weight-loss drug and fend off competition from rival Eli Lilly.

Novo is currently the most valuable company in Europe by market capitalisation, worth some 540.4 billion euro ($576.44 billion) before earnings on Thursday, on the back of Wegovy's... (continue reading...)

(Reuters) - European shares opened on a sombre note on Thursday as investors returned after a mid-week holiday to parse a slew of big-ticket earnings and the Federal Reserve signalling a delay in interest rate cuts.

The pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.2% by 0715 GMT, after logging its first monthly decline this year in April.

Investors were back after the Labour day holiday on Wednesday, a day that saw the Fed signal rates would stay... (continue reading...)

By Himanshi Akhand

(Reuters) - Short bets on most Asian currencies firmed to touch multi-month highs as growing expectations of U.S. interest rates staying higher for longer dampened appetite for riskier assets, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday.

Bearish positions on the South Korean won, the Singapore dollar, the Philippine peso and the Thai baht rose to their highest level since mid-October 2022, according to a fortnightly poll of 12... (continue reading...)

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's National Pension Service (NPS), manager of the world's third-largest public pension fund, will allocate 65% of its assets in risky assets under new long-term asset allocation rules, the welfare ministry said on Thursday.

"Going forward, the fund will keep the ratio of risky assets at 65% in its strategic asset allocations and invest in various kinds of alternative assets in a swift manner within the ratio to raise... (continue reading...)

By Leika Kihara

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan will likely keep intervening to prop up the yen until the risk of speculators triggering a free fall in the currency has been eliminated, said a former central bank official who was involved in Tokyo's market forays a decade ago.

The yen jumped on Thursday on what traders suspect was the second day of intervention following such action on Monday to stem the currency's sharp declines.