Markets

European shares steady, focus on Greece

Published June 11, 2015 Updated June 11, 2015 07:43am

1 min

By Parvez Jabri

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LONDON: European shares steadied in early trading on Thursday after a strong rally in the previous session, with the lack of any concrete progress related to Greek debt negotiations prompting investors to avoid strong bets.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras held a new round of late-night talks with the leaders of Germany and France and agreed to intensify negotiations with Athens' creditors ahead of a looming default at the end of the month.

The talks have been deadlocked over Greece's rejection of the creditors' demands for cuts in pensions and unpopular labour market reforms as conditions for releasing frozen bailout funds. Greece will be in default at the end of June without fresh funds to let it to repay 1.6 billion euros to the IMF.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index was up 0.07 percent at 1,549.91 points by 0715 GMT after surging 1.7 percent in the previous session.

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