Roundup: Hong Kong stocks close slightly lower

Roundup: Hong Kong stocks close slightly lower

HONG KONG, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- Hong Kong shares closed lower forthe fourth straight session Tuesday, led by financial firms,although Internet company Tencent surged following a positiveoutlook on its gaming business.

The benchmark Hang Seng Index fell 12.95 points, or 0.05 percent,to close at 23,788.83, after trading between 23,769.46 and 23,999.11points. The index has fallen 2.6 percent in the past four sessions.

Turnover totaled 62.73 billion HK dollars (8.05 billion U.S.dollars) compared with Monday's 64.67 billion HK dollars.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index lost 34.38 points, or 0.27percent, to close at 12,562.05.

Four sub-indices ended mixed. The Properties sub-index rose 0.23percent, the Commerce and Industry gained 0.14 percent, while theUtilities lost 0.25 percent and the Finance shed 0.27 percent.

Ping An Insurance, China's second largest insurer, tumbled twopercent to 78.45 HK dollars.

China Life, one of the world's largest life insurers by marketvalue, fell 0.96 percent to 30.85 HK dollars.

Bank of Communications, China's fifth biggest lender measured byassets, lost 0.8 percent to 7.68 HK dollars.

China Construction Bank, the country's second largest bank whichaccounts for the third largest weighting of the Hang Seng Index,fell 0.4 percent to 6.89 HK dollars.

ICBC, the world's largest bank by market value, fell 0.2 percentto 5.86 HK dollars.

Tencent bucked the overall trend and was the best-performing bluechip, rising 4.7 percent to 199.1 HK dollars after Deutsche Bankupgraded the stock to Buy from Hold and raised its target to 240 HKdollars from 155 HK dollars.

Citic Pacific jumped 4 percent to 20.85 HK dollars afterMacquarie Securities raised the steel-to-property conglomerate'starget price to 31 HK dollars from 27 HK dollars following apositive outlook on iron ore prices. (1 U.S. dollar equals 7.792 HKdollars).