{"id":8716,"date":"2012-03-09T02:59:26","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T00:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/03\/s-africa-stocks-up-as-results-greece-cheer\/"},"modified":"2012-03-09T02:59:26","modified_gmt":"2012-03-09T00:59:26","slug":"s-africa-stocks-up-as-results-greece-cheer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/s-africa-stocks-up-as-results-greece-cheer\/","title":{"rendered":"S.Africa stocks up as results, Greece cheer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Stocks add 0.5 percent<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Investors seen in dividend hunt<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">JOHANNESBURG, March 8<\/span> (Reuters) &#8211; South African shares<br \/>\nstaged their second straight day of gains on Thursday led by<br \/>\nAspen Pharmacare, as robust local results and brighter<br \/>\nnews on the Greek front cheered investors.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>All eyes on Friday will be on U.S. employment data and the<br \/>\nnext twist in the Greek saga, with investors taking heart from<br \/>\nsigns that Greece would complete a much-needed private debt swap<br \/>\nto avoid a messy default.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The benchmark blue-chip Top-40 index added 0.5<br \/>\npercent to 29,970.84 while the broader All-Share index<br \/>\nclimbed an identical percentage to 33,758.62.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The companies that have been coming out with good results<br \/>\nhave been doing well and there is a chase for dividend yield,&#8221;<br \/>\nsaid Ferdi Heyneke, a portfolio manager at Afrifocus Securities.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Aspen, the southern hemisphere&#8217;s biggest generic drugs<br \/>\nmaker, led blue-chip gainers, rising 2.6 percent to 109.00 rand<br \/>\nas positive momentum continued from Wednesday when it announced<br \/>\na 22 percent spike in first-half profit.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Insurer Sanlam, which on Thursday hiked its<br \/>\ndividend by 13 percent despite a slight one percent dip in<br \/>\nfull-year earnings, closed 2.6 percent higher.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Standard Bank, Africa&#8217;s biggest lender by assets,<br \/>\nrose 0.8 percent to 108.90 rand after it reported a 21 percent<br \/>\nrise in full-year profit, helped by strong performance in its<br \/>\nAfrica business and a drop in bad debts.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>* Stocks add 0.5 percent * Investors seen in dividend hunt JOHANNESBURG, March 8 (Reuters) &#8211; South African shares staged their second straight day of gains on Thursday led by Aspen Pharmacare, as robust local results and brighter news on the Greek front cheered investors. All eyes on Friday will be on U.S. employment data [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-8716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}