LONDON (MarketWatch) -- European shares started on a mixed note Thursday, as an advance for pharmaceutical firms such as Sanofi-Aventis up up 1.7%, offset losses for miners including Rio Tinto, down 1.4%. Elsewhere, shares in Carrefour fell 7.9% after the French retail giant said that it's expecting slight growth in trading profit for 2008. British Airways shares fell 4.1% as it said that merger talks with Australia's Qantas Airways have ended. ASML dropped 12.5%. It cut its fourth-quarter sales estimate and said it would shed jobs. The U.K. FTSE 100 index traded flat at 4,325.54, the German DAX 30 index rose 0.7% to 4,740.00 and the French CAC-40 index advanced 0.2% to 3,248.97.
