SINGAPORE, Nov. 27--The dollar hit a three-month low against the yen and 20-month low to the euro on Monday amid worries about a US economic slowdown, hitting shares in Asian exporters such as Honda but lifting gold prices.
The euro surged to a record high against the yen, extending gains made last week partly on prospects of higher interest rates in the euro zone, Reuters reported.
A regional share index hit a record high, as shares in resources companies such as mining heavyweight BHP Billiton rose on broad gains in commodities prices.
“Strong metal prices have given some support to resource stocks, which fell out of favor with investors in recent weeks,“ said Guy Hutchings, chief investment officer with MFS Investment Management Ltd. in Australia.
Tokyo’s Nikkei rose 0.4 percent in the morning session, while MSCI’s broadest index of shares elsewhere in Asia was up 0.5 percent at 0210 GMT after earlier hitting the latest in a series of all-time highs scaled this month.
The dollar has been under-fire from persistent concerns about central banks diversifying their foreign exchange reserves away from the currency, and also weaker-than-expected US economic data.
By 0210 GMT, the dollar bought around 115.70 yen after hitting a three-month low of 115.40 earlier in the session.
The euro was at $1.3145 after reaching a 20-month peak of $1.3180 on electronic trading platform EBS. Against the yen the single currency was around 152.05 after rising to a record 152.45 yen.
The euro had climbed above the psychologically key $1.30 on Friday in thin trade.
“I think there were probably some speculative moves targeting the period around Thanksgiving,“ said a trader at a Japanese trust bank.
The euro was helped by an upbeat German business sentiment survey released last week that strengthened expectations euro zone rates will keep rising into next year.
Shares in Asian exporters fell on the weak dollar--which lowers the value of their sales in the United States--and after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Saturday predicted a rare decline in its monthly US sales, casting a cloud over the start of the key holiday shopping season.
Honda fell 1.5 percent and Sony Corp. was down 1.3 percent, while in South Korea Samsung Electronics dropped 1.7 percent.
US stocks had dropped on Friday as the dollar’s steep fall renewed inflation worries. The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 0.4 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index eased 0.2 percent.
The pressure on the dollar was also felt across commodity markets, where gold rose above $640 an ounce to its highest since August as investment funds bought the precious metal as an alternative to the US currency, but oil eased back from gains made late last week.

South Africa may have gone a long way to addressing racial injustices but there is a growing acceptance that its huge wealth gap threatens to derail the achievements of the post-apartheid era.
The truth commission which shone the light on the abuses committed by all sides during whites-only rule is credited with playing a major role in reconciling the races of the Rainbow Nation.
But, 10 years on from the start of hearings, commission chairman Desmond Tutu and other observers acknowledge that the body only managed to scratch at the surface of some of the other deep-rooted inequalities that still remain.
“We could have narrowed the gap between the rich and the poor,“ Tutu told AFP on the sidelines of a conference last week which brought together relatives of victims as well as some of those who presided over the harrowing testimony.
“We could have done great deal better in the eradication of poverty, ... in improving the quality of life of everyone,“ added the Nobel-prize winning Anglican archbishop.
Although recent figures have shown a slight drop, South Africa’s remains one of the most crime-ridden countries in the world. And while a black middle class is beginning to emerge, the average white South African’s standard of living remains way ahead of the black majority’s.
Mamphela Ramphele, a former World Bank managing director and mistress of the murdered anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko, said the truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) had been too limited in its objectives and should have sought to redress the economic inequalities.
“We were timid in our formulation of the terms of reference of the TRC,“ she said at the conference. “Leaving out crimes committed in socio-economic terms in our country was a grave mistake.
“The majority of people in this country continue to bleed and their pain is totally unacknowledged--people who were deliberately impoverished.“
The country’s current crime problem could be partly ascribed to this, added Ramphele.
“By walking away from social-economic injustice, we mustn’t be surprised by the level of frustration, anger and rage that is seeping through our streets.“
Even victims of crime who attended the conference acknowledged the that poverty had been the motivating factor for the perpetrators.
One of the panelists, 68-year-old Pauline Nossel, told how she and her invalid husband were recently hijacked by a group of men who kept apologizing, bought the couple a bottle of water each, and advised her to buy a smaller car with her insurance payout “because we are not interested in small cars“.
Even though a frightful experience, she said she had sympathy for her kidnappers’ situation and appreciation for their kindness.
“One of them said: ’We don’t want to hurt people. We don’t have opportunities and there is no money’,“ she recounted.
The Nobel prize winning author Nadine Gordimer struck a similarly reflective stance after she was robbed in her Johannesburg home last month.
“One grabbed me and had his arm across me. It was a muscular, smooth arm and I thought, ’Shouldn’t there be a better use for these hands, this arm than robbing an old woman?’,“ she told Britain Guardian newspaper.
“What a waste of four young men. They should have jobs,“ she added.

Gazprom expects Belarus to pay $200 (153 Euros) per 1,000 cubic meters of gas next year, up from just over $46 today, according to the leaked internal document. (AFP Photo)

MOSCOW, Nov. 27--Russian gas monopoly Gazprom plans major price increases for deliveries of natural gas in 2007 to ex-Soviet Belarus and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, newspapers in Russia reported Monday.
Gazprom, which controls the world’s largest reserves of natural gas, will quadruple prices for Belarus, a close ally of Russia, according to Vedomosti daily, citing the company’s 2007 draft budget, AFP reported.
Gazprom expects Belarus to pay $200 (153 Euros) per 1,000 cubic meters of gas next year, up from just over $46 today, according to the leaked internal document.
A proposed price hike has alarmed Belarus, which is deeply dependent on Russian economic support, including subsidized energy.
In September, President Alexander Lukashenko warned he would cut all ties with Russia if forced to pay a fourfold increase.
Vedomosti cited a source close to Lukashenko as saying that no agreement had yet been reached between Gazprom and Minsk over a price increase.
Kommersant daily reported that steep rises are also planned for clients in the three Baltic states--also former Soviet republics but now members of the European Union and NATO.
“Prices for gas in all the Baltic countries will be raised as high as 260 dollars for 1,000 cubic meters in 2007,“ Kommersant quoted Gazprom sources as saying.
The company’s spokesman, Sergei Kupriyanov, told Kommersant that the Baltics would pay the “average European price.“
Latvia faces a 54 percent hike to $220 for 1,000 cubic meters, while Lithuania could see a 30 percent rise to 210-230 cubic meters, Kommersant reported. The head of Estonia’s Eesti Gaas, Raul Komov, was quoted as saying that “the price of $260 per 1,000 cubic meters is fully possible.“
According to Vedomosti, Gazprom’s 2007 draft budget is based on an average export price of $293 (224 Euros) per 1,000 cubic meters of gas, 14 percent higher than the $257 figure used in the 2006 budget.
An analyst quoted by the newspaper described the price hike as “aggressive.“
Gazprom expects to sell gas on the Russian market for $49 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2007, a 15 percent increase on this year, the newspaper reported.

BEIJING, Nov. 27--Chinese exports of crude oil to isolated and energy-hungry North Korea resumed in October, customs data showed on Monday, after a September halt which raised questions about Beijing’s relations with its neighbor.
The latest statistics overlap with North Korea’s Oct. 9 nuclear test, which drew condemnation from regional powers, including Pyongyang’s longtime backer, China, which gave crucial backing to UN Security Council sanctions against the North, Reuters reported.
China sent 58,685 tones of crude to its impoverished neighbor in October, 67.7 percent more than the same month of
2005 and the largest amount since April this year.
But shipments of key refined oil products--diesel, gasoline and kerosene--were all down from a year earlier, figures from the General Administration of Customs showed.
Since the nuclear test, North Korea has agreed to return to six-party talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons program and expected to resume next month. It has boycotted the talks for a year, complaining about a US financial crackdown.
But envoys have yet to set an exact date for the talks, which bring together the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia.
Chinese data shows that Beijing sent no crude to its neighbor in September--before the nuclear test but two months after the North strained ties with Beijing by test-firing missiles despite public calls from China for restraint.
Beijing and Pyongyang cloak their relationship in secrecy, making it difficult to be sure about even basic diplomatic and economic contacts.
So the September trade figures caused a diplomatic stir, with some analysts interpreting them as a sign that China was using powerful economic levers to pressure its recalcitrant neighbor back to the negotiating table.
Beijing could still be applying subtler pressure through diminished supplies of oil products. North Korea is thought to have only one functioning refinery which processes Chinese oil. In October alone, shipments of kerosene to North Korea tumbled 75 percent to just 128 tones, compared with an average 5,700 tones per month in the year through September.
Gasoline exports were down 68 percent. Light diesel shipments fell 17 percent, but at 10,183 tones still stood well above the January-to-September average of 2,468 tones.

Britain's top 100 listed firms raised the amount of money they contribute to final-salary pension funds by 10 percent over the past two years to manage rising costs. (Reuters Photo)

LONDON, Nov. 27--Britain’s top 100 listed firms raised the amount of money they contribute to final-salary pension funds by 10 percent over the past two years to manage rising costs, according to consultancy Watson Wyatt on Monday.
The average pension contribution from FTSE 100 stood at 9.4 percent of an employee’s salary in 2006, up from 8.5 percent in 2004, the consultancy said in a report, Reuters reported.
Companies are pumping more cash into final-salary pension schemes because their costs have risen due to longer lifespans and low real bond yields. Tough new accounting standards have also highlighted the cost of pension schemes on a firm’s balance sheet. A number of firms have shut schemes to new staff or even closed them to existing members.
Combined contributions from both firms and their staff are at an average level of 13.7 percent of salary, Watson Wyatt said.
Companies are increasingly shifting staff to retirement plans known as defined contribution pensions, in which benefits depend on market performance rather than a pay-based formula.
They have been criticized by trade unions and other groups for shifting market risk entirely on to the shoulders of pension fund members.

BEIJING, Nov. 27--The New York stock Exchange plans to open an office in Beijing, its chief executive was quoted as saying Monday, as he prepared to head to China to get more companies to list on the US bourse.
John Thain, who was set for talks with Chinese companies that might be ready for an overseas listing, told the state-run People’s Daily the NYSE had applied for permission from the Chinese authorities to set up the office, AFP quoted.
“It will help deepen and speed up development of cooperation between the NYSE and China,“ Thain told the newspaper.
“A large number of Chinese companies have become globalized, cross-border corporations and Chinese companies need more capital,“ he said.
Thain has nurtured close contacts with China since becoming head of the NYSE, with this week’s trip being his third in his current position.
In August, the NYSE signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of east China’s Jiangsu province, one of the nation’s most developed and economically active regions.
Under the agreement, Jiangsu said it would promote the NYSE as the “US stock exchange of choice“ for local companies intending to list in the United States.
“More and more private Chinese companies are listing in New York and that’s a good thing,“ the People’s Daily quoted Thain as saying.
“But in future, the NYSE will also strive for listings by even more large state-owned enterprises since they are the backbone of China.“
There are currently 18 Chinese companies listed on the NYSE, including big names such as China Southern and China Mobile.
In addition eight companies from Hong Kong and five from Taiwan are listed on the NYSE.
As of August 31, the 31 companies from the Greater China area had a total market capitalization of 671 billion dollars, according to data from the NYSE.
As Chinese companies seek to tap global financial markets for funds, competition for their business among bourses across the world is heating up.