RTRS: Europe shares close lower, led down by oils and pharmas
European shares fell on Tuesday, with drug stocks falling and a late dip in the crude price hurting oils, while banks and utilities rose, but with volumes low in the last full trading day ahead of the Christmas break.
The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 .FTEU3 index fell 0.2 percent to close at 808.35 points, the fifth successive session of decline.
Crude oil CLc1 fell in late trade, down $1.68 at $38.23 a barrel, extending Monday's losses. Crude is down 74 percent on its July peak. Oil shares, which had boosted the index earlier in the session, finished mostly lower. Total (TOTF.PA), Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L), Repsol (REP.MC) and Statoil (STL.OL) fell between 1.3 and 2 percent.
Among utilities, shares in GDF Suez (GSZ.PA) and Veolia (VIE.PA) were up 3 and 6.1 percent respectively.
Analysts played down the significance of Tuesday's movements due to the low volumes, and said the market was already looking ahead to next year.
"We've been talking for some time about a bear market rally," said Philippe Gijsels, senior equity strategist at Fortis Bank, in Brussels. "It's perhaps not surprising that defensive companies like utilities have gone up."
Banks closed higher. Barclays (BARC.L), Deutsche Bank DBGKn.DE, HSBC (HSBA.L) and UBS (UBSN.VX) rose between 1.3 and 3.9 percent.
Pharmaceuticals were the biggest drag on the index. Sanofi-Aventis (SASY.PA) closed 4.3 percent lower, after a study comparing the French drugmaker's experimental treatment for abnormal heart rhythms with a standard treatment showed mixed results.
Novartis (NOVN.VX) and Roche (ROG.VX) each fell 1.5 percent. Across Europe, Britain's FTSE .FTSE finished 0.2 percent higher, while France's CAC .FCHI fell 0.7 percent and Germany's DAX .GDAXI slipped 0.2 percent.
Europe's FTSEurofirst 300 benchmark index has fallen more than 46 percent this year, hurt by a credit crisis that has forced governments to bail out big banks and tipped major economies into recession.
