European shares fell on Thursday after solid gains in the previous session, with French telecoms and Italian banks underperforming. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index fell 1 percent. The index had risen 1.3 percent in the previous session after Fed Chair Janet Yellen's call for caution in raising US interest rates buoyed global stock markets.
Stefan de Schutter, portfolio manager at Alpha Trading in Frankfurt, said the market was consolidating recent gains due to the lack of fresh triggers which could come next week when US companies give a start to the earnings season. French telecom stocks were among the worst performers after Orange and Bouygues gave them themselves until Sunday to salvage a merger between France's dominant telecom operator and Bouygues Telecom, citing a lack of progress ahead of a Thursday deadline.
Orange shares fell 1.3 percent, while Bouygues declined 3.6 percent. Rival French telecom stocks also lost ground, with Iliad dropping 2.7 percent, Numericable-SFR down 1.8 percent and Altice down 1.9 percent. "I was selling Bouygues yesterday. These bid talks often take longer than expected, and the longer they go on, there's always a chance it could unravel," said Rupert Baker, a European equity sales executive at Mirabaud Securities.
Shares in Italian banks also slumped sharply, as three sources told Reuters that guarantor UniCredit was considering whether to delay Banca Popolare di Vicenza's 1.76 billion euro rights issue, currently slated for April, if market conditions did not improve. The fund-raising is regarded as a crucial test of investor confidence in Italian banks, whose shares have sold off sharply this year because of concerns about 360 billion euros of bad loans clogging their balance sheets.
"Investors fear that the recapitalisation of Popolare di Vicenza may end up with a large portion of unsubscribed rights, forcing UniCredit to take up a great part of it," ICBPI analyst Luca Comi said in a note. The FTSEurofirst has recovered from lows reached in February but is still down by almost 8 percent since the start of 2016. Concerns about a slowdown in China, the world's second-biggest economy, have hit world stock markets and commodity prices. Tour operator TUI rose 5 percent, helped by a rise in summer bookings after the company said it was on track to meet its annual target, while cruise operator Carnival was also higher after a better-than-expected earnings update.
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