Nikkei rises on exporters, Takeda up, Sony falls

TOKYO, Sep 29 (Reuters) The Nikkei average rose 0.45 percent on Friday as Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. was up on a share buyback plan, while easing concerns about a U.S. slowdown helped exporters such as Tokyo Electron Ltd.

But Sony Corp. fell after the announcement of a global replacement programme for batteries it made for notebook PCs, which followed a massive recall by Lenovo Group Ltd. and IBM of their products using Sony-made batteries.

A raft of economic data released before the opening, including consumer prices and industrial production, was in line with market expectations and had little impact on share prices.

''Chances now look high for a soft landing of the U.S.

economy, and an extended rally on Wall Street, helped by a money flow out of commodities into bonds and stocks, is encouraging buying here,'' particularly in technology stocks, said Yasuo Yabe, director of sales at Meiwa Securities.

''Stocks that have lagged behind (in the past month) are also benefitting from this, like machinery, banking and real estate stocks,'' he said.

The Nikkei was up 72.28 points at 16,097.13 as of 0108 GMT, extending its gains into a third session.

The broader TOPIX index was 0.43 percent higher at 1,609.46.

Shares of Takeda, Japan's top drug maker, gained 1.2 percent to 7,400 yen. The company said on Thursday it would buy back up to 9.3 million of its own shares for up 70 billion yen from Oct.

2 to Oct. 27. That would account for 1.05 percent of the firm's outstanding shares.

Tokyo Electron, the world's second-biggest chip-equipment maker, rose 1.5 percent to 8,760 yen.

Shares of Fujitsu Ltd. rose 2.1 percent to 978 yen, helped by news on Thursday that U.S. flash memory company Spansion Inc.

said on Thursday it would sell its older manufacturing facilities in Japan to Fujitsu.

Sony fell 1 percent to 4,770 yen.

Lenovo and IBM's recall of ThinkPad batteries brings the number of battery cells recalled to more than 6 million since Dell Inc. said in August it was recalling 4.1 million notebook batteries made by Sony.

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