• JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) will eliminate 2,800 jobs at Washington Mutual through attrition, Bloomberg reported. In December, the company slashed 9,200 jobs at WaMu, which it bought for $1.9 billion last year.

• General Motors Corp. (GM) posted a loss of almost $31 billion in the fourth quarter, and said its auditors will likely doubt its viability. The company burned through $5 billion during the quarter, and warned that its pension plans were underfunded by $12.4 billion, Reuters reported.

• Hong Kong’s January exports sunk 21.8% from a year earlier, the biggest decline in 50 years. “It’s not just Hong Kong, the financial crisis is dragging down the whole of Asia,” Wang Qian, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg. “The trade environment is going to get worse.”

• Tech giant IBM (IBM) retained its full-year earnings outlook, saying that service contracts are grew in January. “Recognizing that it is still early in the quarter, the company expects double-digit growth in long term signings, and growth in total signings in first quarter 2009,” IBM said in a regulatory filing, Reuters reported.

• The number of Americans filing initial claims for unemployment insurance spiked the week ended Feb. 21, as 667,000 Americans filed initial jobless claims, up 36,000 from a revised 631,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported.

• Oil prices jumped for a second straight day yesterday (Thursday) with light, sweet crude for April delivery jumping $2.72, or 6.4%, to settle at $45.22 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Global Investment News Briefs Friday, February 27, 2009

Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index set a record one-day gain today, soaring 14.2%, or 1,171.14 points, to close at 9,447.57, after being closed Monday for a holiday. Hong Kong’s blue-chip Hang Seng Index extended its 10% rally from yesterday with a 3.2% gain this morning, adding another 520.72 points to close at 17,832.88.

Stock markets in the Philippines, South Korea and Australia also saw gains today.

“The U.S. and Europe now seem to be promising unlimited support to remove the deep-rooted disbelief in the financial system,” Yoo Byung Ok, who oversees the equivalent of $3 billion at Mirae Asset Investments Co. in Seoul, told Bloomberg News. “The key issue here is whether these market gains can be sustained or not. I believe more time is needed to dispel worries about the ripple effect on global economies.”

Europe enjoyed similar strong results, with the FTSEurofirst 300 Index closing up 2.8% for the day after earlier being up as much as 6.8%. The Paris-based CAC40, London’s FTSE 100, Madrid’s IBEX 35 and the Frankfurt-based DAX all posted triple-digit gains.

Russia’s Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange, or MICEX, where the bulk of Russian trading occurs, climbed 11.2% before regulators halted trading, The Associated Press reported.

These global gains were a response to international efforts to recapitalize banks, as well as some easing in the short-term credit markets. The dollar-denominated three-month London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) fell slightly today, down 0.12% to 4.64%. LIBOR’s euro and pound counterparts also fell, albeit by slightly smaller amounts.

“We are now seeing solvency being dealt with, we are seeing huge amounts of liquidity being thrown at the market,” Simon Ballard, a senior portfolio manager at Fortis Investments, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “Banks will little by little start to face one another in the interbank market.”

In Japan, the central bank pledged unlimited dollar funds to shore up capital positions, according to a Washington Post report.  The Japanese government will also relax rules that prevent companies from buying their own stock, Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said. The government will immediately cease the sale of any of the $33 billion in bank stocks it acquired during that country’s “Lost Decade,” Nakagawa added.

Europe announced its bank recapitalization plan yesterday, while the United States announced its own $250 billion plan this morning.

Source: Strong Gains in Asia and Europe as Governments Act to Instill Confidence in Global Banks