London - Italian banks shone in lacklustre
European trading on Thursday after results led by Unicredit
whose results indicated its turnaround was gathering pace.
Europe's STOXX 600 slipped 0.1 percent while both
the eurozone's broader stocks and the blue chip index
fell 0.2 percent.
Financials were a bright spot on the benchmarks for the
second day running, with Unicredit up 4.4 percent
after rising revenues and lower loan losses boosted it to better
than expected first-quarter profits.
Italy's banking index tested its highest levels
in more than a year as Mediobanca, Ubi Banca,
and Banco BPM rose 1.8 to 3.5 percent in concert.
Telecoms stocks were among the worst-performing with
BT down 1.7 percent after it announced 4,000 job cuts in
a restructuring plan to recover from a year it said was
'challenging'.
Shares in Britain's biggest telecoms company have not
recovered from a 20 percent drop after it revealed accounting
malpractices in Italy in January.
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Spain's Telefonica also fell 1.7 percent after its
results.
A setback in its generic drug Advair's approval by the US Food and Drug Administration sent Hikma shares down more
than 8 percent, the worst-performing European stock.
Broker downgrades weighed on some of the top fallers.
Centrica fell 5.8 percent after JP Morgan cut it to
'underweight' from 'overweight', while a rating cut from
Citigroup sent Hannover Re down 5 percent.