European shares paused for breath after weeks of French political upheaval seemed to be reaching a denouement, while the main Wall Street indices surged to record highs in advance of a highly anticipated earnings season.
DUBLIN
Big moves for Irish banking stocks helped propel the Iseq index to a 1.5 per cent gain on Monday as it largely outperformed its European peers.
Bank of Ireland and AIB advanced by 3.5 per cent and 3.3 per cent to €10.09 and €5.17 per share respectively. While there was no stock-specific news related to the sector traders in Dublin said it was clear some selling pressure had finally been released after the recent placement of a tranche of the Government’s remaining shareholding in AIB. Recent studies around projected housing demand within the Republic may also be adding to the positive sentiment around banking stocks.
Cairn Homes also continues to attract investor attention, traders said, with shares in the homebuilder advancing by over 2.1 per cent to €1.82 per share, while its rival Glenveagh gained 1.4 per cent.
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Ryanair advanced 2.2 per cent to €17.20 per share, slightly underperforming its UK and European peers amid positive moves for the sector in recent days.
Smurfit Kappa, meanwhile, gave up its Dublin listing on Monday for a primary listing on Wall Street following its merger with US rival WestRock. The newly-formed Smurfit WestRock will also retain a standard listing in London, ending a relationship with the Dublin market that stretched back to 1964.
LONDON
Weighed down by commodities stocks, the resources-heavy FTSE 100 fell 0.9 per cent in trading while the mid-cap FTSE 250 slipped by just over 0.1 per cent.
One of the standout performers of the session was Britvic. The British soft drinks company with significant Irish interests jumped 4.5 per cent in trading after agreeing to be acquired by Carlsberg for £3.3 billion (€3.9bn), higher than two previous offers made for the group.
Ocado moved towards the top of the mid-cap index with a 6.3 per cent bounce after the online supermarket boosted its partnership with Japan’s Aeon with plans to build a third robotic warehouse.
Shares in Aer Lingus-owner IAG, meanwhile, advanced by close to 2 per cent on a day in which the Labour Court in Dublin proposed that the carrier boost pilots’ pay by 17.75 per cent by mid-2026 in a bid to end a dispute that has forced the cancellation of 550 flights.
Moving in the other direction, industrial and precious metal mining stocks tracked lower gold and spot metal prices with Rio Tinto, Antofagasta and Anglo American all down by between 1 per cent and 1.2 per cent.
EUROPE
Struggling for direction, Europe’s main indices were essentially flat on the session.
Reports that France’s left-wing New Popular Front, the unexpected winner of Sunday’s run-off elections, will not have enough seats to form a new government soothed investor anxieties somewhat. An up and down session saw the Cac40 fall by 0.5 per cent with aerospace and defence group Safran adding 1.5 per cent while pharma group Sanofi advanced by 1.2 per cent.
French luxury stables took a hit with LVMH down 2.8 per cent, matching Gucci owner Kering’s decline. Jameson-owner Pernod Ricard also slipped 1.2 per cent.
NEW YORK
The Nasdaq and the S&P 500 hit record highs on Monday, while the Dow scaled a more than one-month high as investors awaited a key inflation report, congressional testimony from Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell and the start of earnings season this week.
Chip stocks Nvidia, Intel, Marvell Technology, Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm jumped between 1 per cent and 5 per cent, helping the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index gain 2 per cent.
Big banks including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo are slated to kick off the second-quarter earnings season on Friday. Their shares rose by nearly 1 per cent each on the day.
Plane-maker Boeing, meanwhile, gained 2.3 per cent after agreeing to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge and pay a fine of $243.6 million (€224.9m) to resolve a US justice department investigation into steps taken in the wake of two fatal 737 Max crashes. – Additional reporting: Bloomberg, Reuters
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