Europe's Manufacturing Bonanza - By Parmy Olson

The world's developed nations have been lagging behind emerging markets in their economic recoveries, but new data on Thursday gave an encouraging sign that even the likes of troubled economies like Japan, the euro zone and U.K. were on a clear path to revival.

The good news came out of Asia first: figures showed that China's manufacturing output had grown for the thirteenth month in a row, while business sentiment in Japan reached its highest level since 2008.

Then over in the euro zone, the pace of manufacturing activity reached a 40-month high for March, with the region's manufacturing survey coming in stronger than expected amid strong readings from the purchasing managers indexes of Switzerland, France and Germany. In Britain, manufacturing activity jumped to a 15-year high.

For more: Europe's Manufacturing Bonanza - Forbes.com