EADS, the main owner of Airbus, posted a 26 per cent rise in third-quarter sales and maintained its targets for this year. The shares rose 9 per cent to €13.74, regaining everything they lost on Monday after the New York air crash, which involved an Airbus aircraft flown by American Airlines.

Although the Airbus A300 has suffered four big accidents since 1974, this compares well with other makes. The spotlight yesterday was on the engines, made by General Electric, rather than the aircraft. EADS forecast yesterday that deliveries of Airbus aircraft would fall to 300 compared with 320 this year, in line with market expectations. Airbus has not been hit as hard by the downturn in global demand as its rival Boeing, which recently announced 30,000 job cuts. EADS said it would not need to make big cuts if deliveries remained about the 300 a year level.

Infineon, Europe's number two chipmaker, rose 9.7 per cent to €22.10 after releasing full-year results. Although losses increased sharply, they were at the bottom end of expectations, and the sector was up yesterday. The computer memory chip division is where the biggest losses are being made. Infineon is the world's fourth biggest maker of D-Ram chips, but prices have fallen to a third of production costs.

While all but one of Infineon's divisions made a loss in the fourth quarter, totalling a net loss of €591 million, memory chips alone lost €931 million. But the company said it had enough cash to withstand the downturn.

STMicroelectronics, Europe's number one chipmaker, rose 7.9 per cent to €37.27 and chip equipment maker ASML rose 9.6 per cent to €20.49.

The buoyant mood extended to most tech stocks. Nokia was up 8 per cent, Ericsson up 8.4 per cent, Alcatel up 9 per cent and Philips up 8 per cent. Ericsson's credit rating was downgraded by S&P from A- to B+++.