European stocks sink for third straight day

Business

European stocks sink for third straight day

Close

European stocks tumbled, dragging the Stoxx Europe 600 Index to the biggest three-day drop.

12 July,2011 02:51 pm

Concerns about the region’s debt crisis triggered Asian shares and US index futures fall.UniCredit SpA (UCG) and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA (ISP), Italy’s biggest banks, plunged more than 5 percent. Thomas Cook Group Plc (TCG) slumped 23 percent after Europe’s second-largest tour operator said third-quarter results will trail forecasts. BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) and Rio Tinto Group led a decline in basic-resource shares.The benchmark Stoxx 600 lost 1.9 percent to 264.77 at 8:27 am in London. The gauge has fallen 4 percent over the past three days as contagion from Greece’s debt crisis threatened to spread to the bigger economies of Italy and Spain. The measure has declined 9.1 percent since this year’s high on Feb. 17.The VStoxx Index, a measure of the cost of insuring against losses in the Euro Stoxx 50 Index, rose 18 percent to the higher level since March 17.The MSCI Asia Pacific Index tumbled 1.8 percent, while Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures retreated 0.8 percent after Alcoa Inc. (AA) kicked off the U.S. earnings season.Alcoa became the first company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average to report quarterly earnings after the close of New York trading yesterday. The largest U.S. aluminum producer said second-quarter profit more than doubled after prices for the lightweight metal rose.Trade DeficitA US report today may show the trade deficit held near a four-month low in May. The gap was little changed at $44.1 billion compared with the $43.7 billion shortfall in April, according to the median of 73 estimates in a Bloomberg survey.