Hong Kong share prices were dragged lower yesterday by the growing angst surrounding Asia's deepening economic malaise, brokers said.
Moody's Investors Service's decision to downgrade the foreign-currency debt of South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand to junk status put most regional stock markets under pressure, they said.
A fresh set of Japanese bad-debt figures rounded out the grim picture.
The Hang Seng Index dropped 233.34 points, or 2.24 per cent, to end at 10,172.47 - its lowest close since the middle of last month.
The decline took losses over the past two sessions to 581.64 points and left brokers wondering whether support at 10,000 points was strong enough to keep the blue-chip measure in the five-digit range as the year drew to a close.
One broker said: 'We were ripe for a fall [yesterday], given the noises coming out of Wall Street and the problems in Tokyo.' Japanese stocks shed 3.37 per cent as the Ministry of Finance announced that the country's financial system was burdened with 28.08 trillion yen (about HK$1.68 trillion) of bad debts at the end of September, compared with 27.9 trillion yen six months earlier.
