Paris - European stocks inched higher early on Monday, reversing some of the previous session's losses, with Nutreco surging 14 percent as SHV sweetened its takeover bid for the Dutch animal feed and nutrition company.
Shares in struggling oil services group Fugro jumped 32 percent, recovering recent sharp losses, after rival Boskalis bought around 15 percent of its shares.
Belt-tightening by big energy majors faced with plunging oil prices has been hitting oil services companies, fuelling expectation of consolidation in the troubled sector.
At 10:50 SA time, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was up 0.3 percent at 1 348.80 points, after losing 0.5 percent last week.
Also on the M&A front, shares in Club Mediterranee rose 4.9 percent, lifted by a report saying Italian tycoon Andrea Bonomi is gearing up to make a counter offer for the French resort, reigniting a takeover battle.
Bonomi declined to comment.
Solvay gained 2.8 percent, lifted by a report that the Belgian chemicals group is looking at selling its Acetow fibre unit worth an estimated $2 billion (R22 billion).
Solvay declined to comment.
Carlsberg gained 3.3 percent after posting flat earnings despite a sharp drop in sales in Russia, the Danish brewer's largest market.
“Carlsberg has executed well despite difficult market conditions in Russia and in Western Europe,” Alm. Brand analyst Michael Friis Jorgensen said.
“But the investors' focus will quickly shift from the earnings report to the consequences for Carlsberg of the depreciating Russian rouble.”
The rouble has slumped nearly 30 percent against the dollar this year as plunging oil prices and Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis shrivelled Russia's exports and investment inflows.
About three quarters of European companies have reported results so far this earnings season, of which 60 percent have met or beaten profit forecasts, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine data.
In absolute terms, profits are up 13.2 percent but revenues are up just 1.1 percent, highlighting the fact that Europe's earnings rebound has mostly come from cost-cutting. - Reuters