Live news: Roche agrees to buy immunology group Televant for more than $7bn

Healthcare technology company Royal Philips on Monday increased its sales and profits forecast for the year after posting third-quarter earnings of €224mn.

The Netherlands-based company, which is in the middle of a restructuring aimed at cutting costs, said it was now expecting comparable sales growth of 6 to 7 per cent for the full year, up from a previous forecast of mid single-digit growth.

Margins at the level of adjusted earnings before tax and amortisation (ebita) will be 10 to 11 per cent, up from a previous forecast of “the upper end of the high-single-digit range”.

The upgrade comes days after the US’s Food and Drug Administration said Philips’ efforts to remedy faults with its sleep apnoea breathing machines in the US had been inadequate.

Stocks, oil and gold declined in Asian trading on Monday as investors continued to assess the likelihood of a sustained period of elevated interest rates and tensions in the Middle East.

Asian equities were on track for their fourth consecutive day of declines, with China’s CSI 300 falling 0.6 per cent after earlier touching its lowest level in more than four years. Japan’s Topix declined 0.4 per cent.

Oil prices edged lower, with international benchmark Brent dropping 1.1 per cent to trade at $91.11. Brent had gained in recent sessions, driven by concern that the Israel-Hamas conflict could expand.

Spot gold prices, which had rallied as investors sought haven assets, dropped 0.4 per cent to $1,973.42 per troy ounce.

María Corina Machado, a centre-right former lawmaker, is projected to be the opposition’s candidate in next year’s presidential election, most likely facing strongman incumbent Nicolás Maduro, despite being banned from public office.

Sunday’s primary took place amid a thaw in relations between Washington and Caracas that on Wednesday saw a relaxation of US sanctions on Venezuela’s oil and gas and financial sectors, following the resumption of political talks between Maduro’s government and the opposition.

“Today a very powerful force has been unleashed,” Machado, formerly a civil engineer, said in a victory speech late on Sunday night in Caracas, before lambasting the authoritarian Maduro government, which she called a “tyranny”.

China’s CSI 300 stock index fell past its pandemic-era low as official efforts to prop up the country’s equity market failed to stem a sell-off driven by slowing growth and a crisis in the cash-strapped real estate sector.

The benchmark of large and liquid Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed stocks fell as much as 0.9 per cent on Monday, taking it to a low of about 3,480. That level was below a nadir touched in early 2020, near the start of the pandemic, and marked the lowest level since 2019.

The latest leg down for Chinese markets comes despite recent measures from regulators intended to bolster investor sentiment.

Events: Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán gives a speech on Republic Day, the anniversary of the country’s failed 1956 uprising against Soviet rule. The EU Foreign Affairs Council meets in Luxembourg, as does the EU-Kazakhstan Cooperation Council.

Economic indicators: The eurozone October consumer confidence index is published. GfK release November consumer sentiment levels for Germany. France and Germany issue purchasing managers’ index data.

Corporate data: Dutch electronics giant Philips issues third-quarter earnings, as does Swedish heavy engineering company Sandvik, Italian lender UniCredit and Swedish medical technology company Getinge.

Shares in Taiwanese electronic component manufacturer Foxconn and a Shanghai-listed subsidiary dropped on Monday after Chinese state media said the company had been inspected by tax and natural resources authorities in four provinces.

Shares in Foxconn, which is best known for assembling Apple’s iPhone, fell as much 3 per cent in early trading before paring losses to be down about 1.7 per cent. Shares in Foxconn Industrial Internet, a mainland-listed subsidiary, dropped by their 10 per cent daily limit.

Global Times, a state tabloid media outlet, on Sunday reported that tax authorities inspected Foxconn’s sites in Guangdong and Jiangsu, while natural resources officials checked facilities in Henan and Hubei.

Foxconn said it would co-operate with investigations.

Israel said its forces had hit targets from the Hizbollah militant group in Lebanon in the early hours of Monday, as its conflict with Hamas threatened to spill over into other theatres in the region.

The Israeli military said that it struck an antitank missile launch post, as well a military compound and an observation post linked to Hizbollah, the Iran-backed group that dominates southern Lebanon and which fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006.

US officials have been scrambling to contain the tensions, bulking up their military presence in the region, and on Sunday warned Hizbollah and other Iranian proxies in the Middle East not to escalate the conflict.

Asia stocks fell on Monday, putting most indices on track for their fourth consecutive day of losses as tensions in the Middle East and the potential for higher global interest rates hit investor sentiment.

China’s CSI 300 declined 0.4 per cent, South Korea’s Kospi shed 0.1 per cent and Japan’s Topix retreated 0.4 per cent. Hong Kong’s stock market was closed for a public holiday.

Concerns over the potential for conflict between Israel and Hamas to spread into a regional conflagration intensified over the weekend, with the US warning that its troops and other personnel in the Middle East face the risk of a “significant escalation” of attacks against them.

Javier Milei, the radical libertarian economist seen as the frontrunner in Argentina’s presidential elections, appears to have come second in Sunday’s first round vote to Sergio Massa, economy minister in the ruling Peronist government.

With 82 per cent of votes counted, Massa has beaten pollsters’ expectations, winning 36 per cent, against 30.4 per cent for Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party (LLA) and 23.7 per cent for Patricia Bullrich of the mainstream centre-right opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC).

Massa and Milei now advance to a second round on November 19. The elimination of JxC, seen as the ideological middle ground between LLA and the Peronists, and investors’ favoured party, sets the stage for a polarising second-round campaign.

Indonesia’s defence minister and presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto has picked incumbent leader Joko Widodo’s son as his running mate for next year’s election.

Subianto, who has a narrow lead in polls, late on Sunday announced Gibran Rakabuming Raka would run on his ticket as vice-president.

The move follows a controversial court ruling last week that allowed Gibran to run in the February 14 ballot.

The court decided that a minimum age requirement of 40 years old for presidents and vice-presidents could be waived if a candidate had held regional office.

Gibran, 36, is mayor of Surakarta, a city in Java.

Japan: Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida is due to deliver a policy speech at an extraordinary parliamentary session and expected to announce an economic stimulus package.

Other events: Bond traders will be focused on the Reserve Bank of India as a $5bn currency swap matures. ICT Week 2023, which attracts business process and information technology outsourcing companies, opens in Tashkent. Azerbaijan hosts the first of three days of military exercises with Turkey.

Economic data: Singapore releases consumer price index figures for September. Taiwan publishes industrial production and jobless rates for the same month. Barclays analysts expect unemployment to rise to 3.5 per cent from 3.4 per cent in August.

Corporate data: Shenzhen-based state-invested technology company ZTE and Kyoto-based machinery maker Nidec release third-quarter earnings. Two south-east Asian lenders, Bank Negara Indonesia and Bank of the Philippine Islands, also announce results.

Markets: Stock exchanges in Hong Kong and New Zealand are closed for public holidays.

Former UK prime ministers and chancellors have joined forces to call for an end to decades of “chopping and changing” on regional policy, in a report that warns it has led to growing inequality and “40 years of failure”.

Labour former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Conservative leader John Major and former Tory chancellor George Osborne are among those calling for a more consistent cross-party approach.

Ed Balls, former Labour minister, led a Harvard university and King’s College London project on UK inequality, which included interviews with those who oversaw the country’s spluttering regional policy.

Read more about their suggestions here.

Switzerland’s rightwing populists were set to achieve one of their strongest performances in parliamentary elections on Sunday as voters abandoned green politics amid fears over immigration and rising energy costs.

The hardline conservative Swiss Peoples’ party (SVP) was projected to secure 29.1 per cent of the vote in elections to the National Council, the lower house of parliament, after 95 per cent of district results were declared. This was on track to be the second-best result in the party’s recent history, after winning 29.4 per cent of the vote in 2015.

The result was a “clear slide to the right”, said Thierry Burkart, leader of the pro-business liberal FDP party. The liberals suffered their worst result, winning just 14.5 per cent. Voters had delivered a “signal and a mandate”, Burkart told Swiss TV.

Read more here.

The next seven days will — again — be dominated by uncertain events, most prominently the Israel-Hamas conflict and the US House Speaker debacle, as well as the fallout from Argentina’s elections.

Meanwhile, the European Central Bank’s rate-setters meet in Athens on their annual EU getaway from Frankfurt and official statistical bodies produce a clutch of numbers, including preliminary US third-quarter GDP and the delayed UK labour market statistics.

The ECB’s Monetary Policy Committee members are expected to vote to hold rates, not least because of the uncertainty created by the Israel-Gaza conflict and its impact on oil prices, as Greece’s central bank governor Yannis Stournaras told the FT last week.

Read the full week ahead calendar here.