MILAN/FRANKFURT: European shares ended at a more-than-eight-month high on Monday as positive data from Moderna Inc's Covid-19 vaccine boosted investor confidence in a faster pace of economic revival, while signs of recovery in Asia also helped. Moderna became the second drugmaker in a week to report high efficacy for an experimental coronavirus vaccine after Pfizer made a similar announcement on Nov. 9.
"The more companies that can develop a vaccine candidate that can be shown to be effective, the more optimistic investors will be about being able to see a way out of this pandemic and for economic activity, sort of come back to some semblance of normality," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.
The pan-European STOXX 600 ended 1.3% higher with oil stocks leading gains on the back of a 4% jump in oil prices, while banks rose 3.1%, led by Spanish lender BBVA. BBVA ended 16% higher and was one of the top three performing stocks on the STOXX 600 index after PNC Financial Services Group said it would buy its US business for $11.6 billion in cash.
The benchmark STOXX 600 has gained nearly 40% from its March lows and is on track for its best month in nearly three decades. But the economic disruption arising out of a spike in coronavirus cases across Europe has led the index to underperform its US peers this year.
In company news, Vodafone Group gained 6.7% after it said it was increasingly confident about its full-year performance following a "resilient" first-half, despite underlying momentum being obscured by the impact of Covid-19.
Italy's Nexi jumped 0.5% after it struck its second tie-up in six weeks, agreeing a 7.8 billion euro ($9.2 billion) merger with Nordic rival Nets to create Europe's largest payments group.
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