European stocks rose on Monday after falling the week before, as Swiss chemical company Syngenta gained after US regulators cleared a take-over bid for the company by ChemChina. Syngenta rose up 10.6 percent, the top STOXX Europe 600 riser, after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US cleared ChemChina's $43 billion bid, making it more likely the take-over of the world's largest pesticides maker will go through.
The STOXX 600 rose 0.1 percent, stabilising after posting its biggest weekly drop since June on Friday. It gave back some of the gains, which had taken it to highest level since Britain voted in June to leave the European Union. "The market got very expensive, and it had rallied in very thin volume," said Zeg Choudhry, managing director at LONTRAD. "But underneath, the market is being supported by easy money and it's not feeling like there will be a more substantial correction."
Shares of Teleperformance, an investor favourite following the Brexit vote, rose 8.9 percent, hitting a record high after agreeing to buy LanguageLine Solutions. Irish clean energy company Kingspan rose 5.8 percent after profit and revenue beat expectations. The company also said it had seen no impact on trading so far from June's Brexit vote. Among the stocks that fell, Getinge dropped 3.9 percent as CEO Alex Myers was fired just 17 months after taking the job.
Basic resources fell 1.6 percent, making them the biggest sectoral faller, weighed down by a drop in mining stocks. Oil & Gas shares also fell, down 0.7 percent as dollar-denominated commodity prices came under pressure from a rise in the US currency. Chinese export data fuelled concerns over market oversupply.