SYDNEY: Australian shares jumped 2.3 percent on Friday, snapping a four-day losing streak, after Greece backed away from a proposed referendum that threatened its membership in the euro, and after a surprise European Central Bank rate cut.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou backed away from his referendum proposal that could have derailed last week's long-awaited agreement to cut Greek debt and shore up European banks. For details, see
"The Greek referendum was never going to be a good idea, unsurprisingly they backed away from it," said Chris Kimber, Managing Director Fat Prophets.
Top miners led the way higher, with Rio Tinto rising 4.5 percent, Fortescue Metals up 5.3 percent and BHP Billiton adding 3.6 percent.
"We're still pretty comfortable with the market, we are very bullish on gold, we still think it will be at $2000 by the end of March, we think the China story is intact, the US is chugging away at two and a half percent and looks like things are staying out of recession territory there," he added.
The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index lifted 99.6 points to 4,271.4 at 0101 GMT. The index had lost 0.3 percent in the previous session.
New Zealand's benchmark NZX 50 index rose 0.5 percent to 3,328.9.
STOCKS ON THE MOVE
Qantas Airways shares rose 2.5 percent to $1.62 after CEO Alan Joyce appeared before a parliamentary committee on Friday morning, vowing to go beyond compensation requests demanded by Australia's competition regulator. Joyce told Australia lawmakers he had not had talks with any private equity groups on breaking up the airline.
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