European shares were subdued on Monday, ahead of key meetings between Ukraine, European leaders and US President Donald Trump, following a Russia-US summit that ended without an immediate agreement.
Mr Trump met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Friday and agreed that a peace deal should be worked upon without a ceasefire.
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy will meet Mr Trump along with other European leaders in a bid to draw out a peace deal that will not favour Moscow.
Dublin
The Dublin market got off to a poor start to the week, ending the session down 0.46 per cent as financial stocks dipped lower and constructions stocks were mixed.
RM Block
Bank of Ireland was 1.25 per cent lower, falling to €13, while AIB was off almost 0.7 per cent, closing at €7.30 after hitting a low of €7.14 earlier in the day. Permanent TSB shed 0.4 per cent by the close of the session, while insurer FBD was up to €14.25, some 0.7 per cent higher.
Insulation specialist Kingspan lost 0.3 per cent, while Glanbia shed 1.4 per cent.
Airline Ryanair was down almost 0.5 per cent to finish the day at €26.63.
London
Britain’s FTSE 100 closed higher on Monday, propelled by gains in healthcare and defence stocks. The blue-chip FTSE 100 finished 0.2 per cent up after dipping earlier in the session. However, the benchmark was still well below Friday’s intraday record high.
The midcap FTSE 250 ended little changed.
Heavyweight healthcare shares primarily drove Monday’s advances, rising 1.2 per cent. Aerospace and the defence sector began the week on a strong footing, advancing 1.2 per cent, with Babcock International Group jumping 5.3 per cent after brokerage firm RBC Capital Markets initiated coverage at “outperform” rating.
Among single stocks, bootmaker Dr Martens gained 8.5 per cent after brokerage firm Peel Hunt upgraded the stock to “buy” from “add”.
Europe
The pan-European Stoxx 600 index closed 0.1 per cent up, after logging a second straight weekly gain on Friday.
Europe’s index tracking aerospace and defence stocks was up 0.7 per cent, after falling in the last session.
Most sectors on the benchmark Stoxx were lower, with a 1.6 per cent and 0.5 per cent decline in miners and heavyweight banks weighing the most.
Novo Nordisk jumped 6.6 per cent after the drugmaker’s weight-loss drug Wegovy received an accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat a serious liver condition.
Separately, it announced it was offering its diabetes drug Ozempic for $499 per month to eligible patients in the U.S.
Other renewables also gained, with EDP Renonvaveis surging 6.2 per cent, while Orsted and RWE both gained 1 per cent each.
Commerzbankfell 3.2 per cent, the most among banks, after Deutsche Bank downgraded the stock to “Hold” from “Buy”.
New York
Wall Street’s main indexes were subdued on Monday, in a quiet start to a week packed with corporate earnings reports from major retailers and the Federal Reserve’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole.
Investors will closely monitor reports from Walmart, Home Depot and Target among others, which are expected this week, to determine how trade uncertainty and inflation expectations have affected US consumers.
At 11.43am. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was little changed, as was the S&P 500. The Nasdaq Composite lost 40.51 points, or 0.18 per cent, to 21,582.97.
Six of the 11 S&P 500 sectors edged lower, with communication services in the lead with a 0.9 per cent fall, weighed by Facebook parent Meta’s 2.7 per cent slide.
On the trade front, the Trump administration widened the reach of its 50 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium imports by adding hundreds of derivative products to the list of goods subject to the levies.
Dayforce jumped 26.9 per cent after a report said PE firm Thoma Bravo is in talks to acquire the HR management software firm.
Solar stocks such as SunRun rose 6.7 per cent and First Solar gained 9.2 per cent after the US Treasury Department unveiled new federal tax subsidy rules for solar and wind projects. – Additional reporting: Reuters
