Most regional benchmarks ended the last session of the week lower, tracking overnight losses on Wall Street.

Speaking on Thursday evening the President of the Federal Reserve bank of Kansas City, Esther George, said that according to some of the monetary indicators which she uses interest rates may need to rise this same year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Compensating for that, the Chinese province of Jinan cancelled limits on house purchases after implementing them for over three years, Xinhua reported.

Acting as a backdrop, financial markets worldwide felt the ripple effects as the share price of Portuguese lender Banco Espirito Santo plummeted in the wake of missed debt payments by its controlling shareholder.

For sceptics the above episode may mean that Eurozone policymakers may not yet have successfully short-circuited the negative feed-back loop between Eurozone sovereigns and their banking systems.

The dollar/yen was off by 0.27% to 101.31 and the Nikkei-225 slipped 0.34% to 15,164.04 points.

However, the Shanghai Stock Exchange's benchmark index advanced 0.42% to 2,046.96 points.

China Shipping Container Lines Co. jumped 9.8%.

Back in Japan, Asia's largest retailer Fast Retailing cut its profit forecast for a second time in the current fiscal year.

The Kospi dropped by 0.7% to the 1,988.74 point mark.

AB

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