The Trading session on the Old Continent ended with divergent movements of major indexes on the background of mixed economic data today. During today’s session of the European Central Bank expected left its main interest rate in the eurozone at a level of 1 percent for the eighth consecutive month in December. Its president, Jean-Claude Trichet surprised markets, however, as announced in December that the planned auction for the granting of loans to commercial banks in the euro area for a period of 1 year will be in the basic rate of 1%. Instead, the interest rate will be indexed to market interest rates in the euro area. Economic data today showed that services sector in Britain and the United States has dropped unexpectedly in November. Moreover, the gross domestic product of the euro area rose by 0.4 percent in the third quarter, but only because of the increase in government spending and exports. Shares of the largest engineering company Siemens in Europe fell by 5.2 percent to 64.08 euros on the stock exchange in Frankfurt, after the conglomerate reported its first quarterly loss for last year. Conglomerate announced that its profit has contracted by 57 percent annually for the preceding fiscal 2009
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The European indexes closed in positive territory, trading, fell after concerns about the effect of the Dubai requested postponement of debt payments. Shares of Royal Bank of Scotland, which provided the greatest amount of loans of the Dubai government investment holding company Dubai World from January 2007 onwards, jumped 5.2 percent after yesterday fell to a seven-month minimum. Michelin and Volkswagen shares up led by the automotive sector yesterday after the industrial group of companies for cars and auto parts, included in the index Dow Jones Stoxx 600 slipped 4.3 percent. Stoxx 600 ended the session with an increase of 1,3 percent to 242.85 points, after earlier in the day lost 1.8 percent. Index yesterday reported the strongest decline since April because of the news from Dubai. Major national indexes rose in all 18 western European markets except Luxembourg and Iceland. The UK’s FTSE rose 1% to 5245.73 points, the French CAC 40 advanced by 1,2 per cent to 3721.45 points while the German DAX added 1.3 percent to 5685.61 points.
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