ADRs End Slightly Higher; Alibaba, Aegon and Santander Trade Actively

International stocks trading in New York closed slightly higher on Wednesday.

The BNY Mellon index of American depositary receipts rose 0.6% to 143.17. The European index increased 0.6% to 133.97. The Asian index jumped 0.6% to 169.06. The Latin American index rose 1.3% to 214.73. And the emerging-markets index increased 0.2% to 296.34.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA), Aegon NV (AGN) and Banco Santander SA (SAN) were among those with ADRs that traded actively.

German business-software vendor SAP SE and Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA) plan to expand their partnership in online platform services, the two companies said Wednesday. The companies plan to offer SAP's online business-process-management software SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud Platform to customers of Alibaba's cloud-computing business in China. Under the terms of the agreement, SAP will continue to use Alibaba Cloud technology and Alibaba will use SAP S/4HANA in return. ADRs of Alibaba were up 3.8% to $162.63.

Aegon said Wednesday that it will repurchase 24.1 million shares in order to offset the dilutive effect of issuing stock as part of its interim dividend. The buyback will begin on Oct. 1 and continue until Nov. 9, the Dutch insurance and asset management company said. The shares will be bought at the daily volume-weighted average during the period. ADRs of Aegon were up 3.3% to $6.29.

Santander has reached an agreement to sell a portfolio of residential properties to an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management LP for about 1.54 billion euros ($1.80 billion), it said Wednesday. The price corresponds to 55% of the portfolio's gross book value, the Spanish bank said. "This portfolio of foreclosed properties consists of 35,700 residential properties and associated parking and storage and will be serviced by Haya Real Estate, a property-management company affiliated with the Cerberus group," it said in a statement. The bank expects the deal to be completed by the first quarter of next year, and doesn't see it having a significant impact on results and capital. ADRs of Santander rose 2.1% to $5.25.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 19, 2018 18:24 ET (22:24 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.