European Stocks Trim Strong Weekly Gains

(RTTNews) - European stocks finished an otherwise strong week on a downbeat note Friday, ending a three-day rally that saw widespread gains across the region.

The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone bluechip stocks lost 0.48 percent, but posted a weekly advance of 1.43 percent.

Major markets were cheered this week by robust U.S. jobs growth and dovish talk from central bankers in the U.S. and Europe.

The German DAX lost 0.13 percent today and the French CAC 40 dropped 0.42 percent. The UK's FTSE 100 was virtually unchanged, while Switzerland's SMI slipped 0.18 percent.

BNP Paribas SA lost 2.2 percent after Macquarie Group Ltd. downgraded the French lender.

Erste Group plunged 16 percent in Vienna. The company expects risk costs to rise from the planned 1.7 billion euros to about 2.4 billion euros in 2014 as a result of increased provisions in Hungary and Romania.

Barclays, J.P. Morgan Cazenove and Société Générale all downgraded their recommendations on the stock.

Alstom gained 1 percent. The French stock regulator said, the deal by the French government to acquire a 20 percent stake in Alstom from Bouygues tantamounts to concerted action. The ruling will make it expensive for Paris to acquire the stake.

Daimler reported strong growth in sales of Mercedes-Benz in the first half of the year. The stock edged higher by 0.34 percent.

Volkswagen is fractionally lower. Sports-car maker Porsche, owned by the auto giant, Thursday said it increased its stake in engineering group Bertrandt AG by nearly four percentage points to about 29 percent. Shares were little changed.

Antofagasta was raised to ''Equalweight'' from ''Underweight'' at Morgan Stanley. The stock picked up 0.8 percent.

easyJet added 1 percent after reporting traffic data. The airline carried 8.3 million passengers in June, a rise of 5 percent from the year earlier.

Xchanging, which announced an acquisition, rose 10 percent.