Slightly Up on Asian Markets - but Nissan Soared

It was mainly plus figures for leading indexes on Asian stock exchanges in Wednesday morning trading, with some exception for Japan.

In Tokyo, there was a half percent drop for the Nikkei 225 index and largely unchanged for the broader Topix index. But a high-flyer was the Nissan share, which was up as much as 24 percent at one point, following reports of talks with Honda, where one alternative is said to be a merger. The Honda share, however, was down a few percent.

In China, the composite indexes in Shanghai and Shenzhen were both up around 0.7 percent, and in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index was not far behind, up 0.6 percent.

In South Korea, the Kospi index stood at plus 0.8 percent.