LONDON (Dow Jones) - Asian markets closed higher Tuesday in reaction to a banner day on Wall Street and Ben Bernanke's selection to succeed Alan Greenspan at the Fed.

The Nikkei closed up 1.3% at 13,280.62.

Elsewhere, Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.5% to 14,471.47, Sydney's All Ordinaries gained 0.8% to 4,350.80, Singapore's Straits Times index climbed 0.6% to 2,235.67, and Taipei's Weighted index rose 0.07% to 5,721.31.

Only Seoul's Kospi closed down, shedding 0.3%, to 1,181.28 on concerns that a recent rally may have pushed stock prices too high.

U.S. share moves were influential. The Dow posted its biggest one-day point gain in six months after President George Bush announced he's nominating Bernanke to succeed Greenspan at the end of January. The nomination requires U.S. Senate confirmation.

Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (HMC) and other exporter stocks closed higher. Honda has received stronger-than-expected orders for its Civic gasoline-electric hybrid model ahead of the model's launch on Nov. 22 in Japan .

NTT DoCoMo Inc. (NTT) rose after reporting it had ended an equity agreement with a Dutch telecom company. Sumitomo Chemical Co. Ltd. (SUMCF) gained after it said half-year earnings would likely top its forecasts.

Taisei Corp. and other construction firms also advanced after UBS raised its target prices for shares in the sector.

Hino Motors Ltd. , the truck-production subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp. (TM), extended gains after raising full-year earnings estimates.

Hino also said group net profit surged 72% in the first half ended September, a stark contrast to one year ago, when it wrote down some of its assets.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange, Asia's biggest bourse, reported a 31.5% rise in first-half net profit as increased trading volume led to higher revenue.

And Japanese company demand for bank loans rose in the three months to September, a Bank of Japan survey showed, with the headline index climbing to its highest in the poll's history.

The BOJ's quarterly survey of 50 banks produced a diffusion index of plus 11, up from zero in April-June, and the loftiest reading since the survey began in January-March 2000.

Sumitomo Trust & Banking Co. and SBI Holdings Inc. said they have agreed to set up an Internet-based bank and form a capital alliance.

Pending approval from regulators, the two institutions hope to start the Internet bank's operations in the fiscal year that starts in April 2007 .

And China aims to maintain an average annual economic growth rate of 7.5% from 2006 to 2010, in line with the country's long-term goals, development chief Ma Kai said in an article published on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

Ma said the economy now needed to grow just 5.7%annually between 2006 and 2010 for GDP to double its 2000 level, because the average annual growth rate from 2001 to 2005 had been around 8.8%, whereas only 7.2% had been needed.

U.S. stocks closed sharply higher Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S & P 500 posting their biggest one-day gains in six months, after strong earnings and Bush's nomination of Bernanke as the next Federal Reserve chief. .

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

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