Bangkok  - Southeast Asia Energy Ltd, a Thai-owned hydropower project in Laos, is preparing to list on the Stock Exchange of Thailand later this year, media reports said Monday.

Ch Karnchang, a Thai construction firm that owns the plant, is seeking a financial adviser for helping with the listing, which would become the first such cross-border listing of a company from Indochina on the Thai bourse, The Nation newspaper reported.

The company needs funding to complete the Nam Ngum II hydropower plant. The plant on the Nam Ngum River, a major tributary of the Mekong, is to generate 615 megawatts of electricity to be sold to Thailand.

The Bangkok bourse has a target to attract at least 40 firms from Indochina - Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

Tokyo  - Tokyo stocks ended Monday morning trading lower as Japanese companies reported gloomy earnings results and downward revisions of full-year earnings projections.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average edged down 38.3 points, or 0.48 per cent, to 7,955.75.

The broader Topix index of all first-section issues was down 8.63 points, or 1.09 per cent, to 785.4.

On currency markets at 9 am (0000 GMT), the dollar traded at 89.67-72 yen, up from Friday's 5 pm quote of 89.49-52 yen.

The 30-share index Sensex gained 749.89 points to 9,424.24 during the week ended January 30, 2009, while the broad based NSE Nifty soared 196.25 points to 2,874.80 in the same period.
 
Indian equities, which posted sturdy gains on three of the four trading sessions, showed strong performance after three successive weeks of losses.

The market got well during the week on account of positive global signals and some reasonably good numbers from India Inc.

Damascus  - Syria's first stock exchange, which is currently operating in pilot trading, will be officially launched on March 9, media reports said on Friday.

The official news agency SANA reported that interim operations of the Damascus Securities Exchange included five large Syrian companies - the International Bank for Trade and Finance, Bank of Syria and Overseas, Arab Bank-Syria, Banque Bemo Saudi-French, and Al-Ahliah Company for Transport.

After trading flat during the previous trading hour, the Sensex bounced back into the positive zone on the back of buying action witnessed across frontliners.

The market was trading sluggishly due to lack of cues. Oil & gas, metal and FMCG stocks went up, while select power and IT stocks declined.

BSE Midcap and Smallcap index gained 0.52% and 0.46%, respectively.

The 30-share index, BSE Sensex, today (Jan 30) belled the day at 9,111.12 after losing 125.16 points.

The key benchmark indices were trading lower on heavy selling by funds following a weak global trend.

Selling pressure has emerged across most sectors and power, capital goods and pharma lead the decline.

At 11:38 a.m., the Sensex was down 45.10 points at 9,191.18 levels and the Nifty has slumped 13.45 points to 2,810.50 levels.

Mr. Shrikant Chouhan, technical analyst, Kotak Securities, said, “The overall breadth of the market remains weak but if the Nifty is able to sustain above 2,790 then it may reach 2,925 levels also.”