JAKARTA (Bloomberg) -- Asian stocks fell for the seventh time in eight weeks this year on concern widening credit-market losses and record crude oil prices will erode profits.

Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. dropped for the week after its chief executive said a “bloodbath” in debt markets will erase earnings growth. Millea Holdings Inc. slumped the most in two months after a newspaper said Aioi Insurance Co. will report $747 million of sub-prime-related losses. Tokyo Electric Power Co. declined after crude oil prices climbed to a record high.
“The sub-prime issue isn’t over yet,” said Hans Kunnen, who helps manage $128 billion at Colonial First State Global Asset Management in Sydney. “There’s no question that funding costs have gone up a touch, which doesn’t help banks.”
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped 0.8 percent to 143.66, widening its 2008 loss to 9 percent. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell 0.9 percent this week and markets retreated around the region, except for Taiwan, Indonesia and New Zealand.
Australia & New Zealand Banking lost 6.5 percent to A$22.36 this week after Chief Executive Officer Michael Smith said rising credit costs are outstripping profit growth this year. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the country’s top mortgage lender, slipped 8.2 percent this week to A$42.59.
Millea, Japan’s No. 1 insurer tumbled 7.7 percent to 3,700 yen, the biggest weekly loss since Dec. 14. Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co., the second-biggest insurer by market value, declined 5.9 percent to 1,005 yen.
----------------------------------------Tokyo Electric
Aioi Insurance, Japan’s fourth-largest non-life insurer, will have a loss of more than 80 billion yen ($747 million) this year on investments linked to U.S. sub-prime mortgages, the Yomiuri newspaper reported. The stock tumbled 4.7 percent to 449 yen.
Shares also declined after the Financial Times said that Credit Agricole SA, France’s biggest retail bank, may write down another 650 million euros ($965 million) to 900 million euros when it announces 2007 results on March 5.
The MSCI Asia-Pacific Utilities Index dropped 3.5 percent this week, the steepest decline among the regional benchmark’s 10 industry groups, after crude oil prices climbed to $101.32 a barrel, the highest since oil futures began trading in 1983.
Tokyo Electric, Asia’s biggest utility company, declined 5.4 percent to 2,725 yen and Kansai Electric Power Co., Japan’s second-biggest power producer, dropped 4.2 percent to 2,610 yen.
“It adds to the cost of companies that are not producing oil,” said Elan Cohen, who helps oversee $350 billion in assets at JPMorgan Private Bank in Singapore. “In Asia, the impact of higher oil prices is definitely shaving off some of the gross domestic product growth.”
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Korea Electric Power Corp., South Korea’s biggest electricity generator, lost 4.8 percent to 33,450 won.
Meanwhile, Vietnam’s benchmark stock index fell to the lowest since December 2006 as banks cut loans for equity investment. The South Asian nation is trying to slow the fastest inflation in 12 years.
The Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange’s VN Index plunged 16 percent this week, the worst performer among the 90 benchmarks tracked by Bloomberg. Saigon Securities Inc., the country’s largest brokerage, tumbled 21 percent to 103,000 dong.