LONDON: European shares fell yesterday as the shooting down of a passenger plane over Ukraine stoked tensions between Russia and the West and sapped appetite for assets which depend on economic growth.
“People in the market are still worried that there will be an escalation in the conflict (following the plane crash),” said Markus Huber, senior sales trader at Peregrine & Black. “But it’s so serious that maybe people will pull back from the conflict now.”
London’s benchmark FTSE 100 ended the day off by 0.68 per cent at 6,738.32 points, Frankfurt’s DAX 30 index shed 1.07 per cent to 9,753.88 and Paris’ CAC 40 was off by 1.21 per cent to close at 4,316.12.
Milan’s stock index plunged by 2.22 per cent, and its peer in Madrid gave up 1.17 per cent.
Broad-based falls saw all but one sector on the STOXX Europe 600 in negative territory, although declines were modest at between 0.1 per cent and 1.1 per cent. Agencies