Upbeat corporate results helped European shares to rebound on Tuesday from hefty falls a day earlier, led by strong sales figures from luxury goods groups. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index of top shares closed up 0.4 percent at 1,117.10 points, recouping some losses after hitting a three-week closing low on Monday when Standard & Poor cut its credit outlook on the United States to negative.
The index gave back some gains in late trading as shares on Wall Street slipped from earlier highs. Robust quarterly earnings bolstered confidence in the corporate outlook, with better-than-expected sales helping luxury firms Burberry and LVMH gain 6 and 5 percent. Upbeat results from manufacturing bellwether SKF helped alleviate worries about the impact of rising raw material prices on industrial firms' margins, with the world's top bearings maker rising 6.4 percent to the top of the leaderboard.
"Global companies, particularly those who manufacture things, are going to be reporting more profit and cash. There's plenty of scope for exporting at current levels for the pound and the US dollar," said a London-based fund manager who has around $120 million in assets under management. Despite the gains in equities, some caution about the euro zone's debt troubles prevailed in wider financial markets, with growing talk that Greece would have to restructure its debt lifting short-dated Greek bond yields. The Greek banking index rose 1.2 percent after hefty falls in the previous session, though the index trades around its lowest levels since early 1997. The euro zone's blue chip Euro STOXX 50 index closed up 0.3 percent at 2,857.61 points.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.