Luxury goods leader LVMH, which was hit badly on Monday by a weak trading statement, came off 1 per cent at #63.90 for a four-day decline of 10 per cent.

Heavy engineer Alstom ran into selling for the second day running with negative broker comment in the wake of Tuesday's weak results statement pushing the shares down 1.4 per cent at #32.10.

Mediolanum, in which Italian prime minister-elect Mr Silvio Berlusconi has a stake, was marked 1.9 per cent lower at #13.20. DG Bank slipped 0.4 per cent to #120 as the German co-operative bank, which is to be taken over by rival GZ Bank, reported a sharp drop in core first-quarter earnings and saw no improvement in the current year.

By contrast, Swiss insurer Berner Versicherung soared 20.2 per cent to SFr768 as Allianz offered SFr750 a share for the 40 per cent it does not own. The German group said that if all shareholders tendered their shares, the offer would be worth SFr269.1 million.

Generali eased 0.3 per cent to #34.45 as the Italian group, Europe's third-largest insurer, reported a fall in first-quarter profit while forecasting that full-year profit would still beat that for 2000.

Societe Generale put on 1.6 per cent to #71 ahead of quarterly results due after the market closed.

Elsewhere in the sector, France Telecom slipped 0.6 per cent and Deutsche Telekom even lower after their announcement on Tuesday that they were selling their 10 per cent stakes in Sprint, the US carrier.

In technology stocks, Alcatel fell sharply on the difficulties at 360networks of Canada. Alcatel has a $1.1 billion contract to supply 360networks with equipment for a telecoms cable link across the Pacific. But late on Tuesday, 360networks said it was scaling back two of its projects.

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, the French IT consultancy group, fell 1.5 per cent to #134 after posting disappointing first-quarter results. Sales rose 9.7 per cent in the first quarter, or 7.6 per cent, on a comparable basis.