Melbourne: Asian stocks are likely to fall after a late downturn on Wall Street, and amid jitters over Japanese corporate earnings, as several companies, including Sony Corp, report said on Thursday.

Markets like India, which slid on uncertainty over the US Federal Reserve's next move, could rebound after the Fed cut rates by 0.5 percent following last week's emergency 0.75 percent cut.

Australian shares set the tone for Asia, sinking as much as 2 percent in early trade on Thursday, led down by banks and the market's biggest retailer, Woolworths Ltd. .

In Japan, investors knocked banks on Wednesday after reports that Mizuho Financial Group might inject an additional $1.9 billion into its unit Mizuho Securities to shore up the brokerage hit by bad subprime investments.

Sharp falls for key Hong Kong and Taiwanese stocks, like Sinopec and UMC, on Wall Street pointed to weaker openings for Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Asian stocks listed on Wall Street fell 0.8 percent, while MSCI's measure of Asian stocks excluding Japan slid 1.86 percent.

Source : UNI