RTRS: Europe shares close lower, led down by oils and pharmas
FTSEurofirst 300 falls 0.2 percent
* Oils fall after crude slides
* Low volumes in last full day before Christmas break
By Brian Gorman
LONDON, Dec 23 (Reuters) - 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.Airlines gained, partly due to the lower oil price. Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) rose 1.4 percent after raising its offer for Austrian Airlines (AUAV.VI), up 9.8 percent.
Among food producers, Cadbury (CBRY.L) rose 1.1 percent to a three-month high after Investec upgraded its earnings estimates due to the benefits of the weaker pound, and following the company's trading update last week.
Further evidence of economic weakness came from the UK, where gross domestic product fell by 0.6 percent in the three months to September, revised down from a previous estimate for a 0.5 percent fall. As European bourses were closing, the Dow Jones .DJI, S&P 500 .SPX and Nasdaq Composite .IXIC were down between 0.3 and 0.7 percent.
The pace of existing home sales in the United States plunged a record 8.6 percent in November and prices fell a record amount, said the National Association of Realtors.
Gijsels added: "Everyone knows the economy is bad, and the first half of 2009 will be very difficult. But with (President-Elect Barack) Obama's stimulus plan and the actions of the Central banks, we'll see the realisation in the New Year that the world is not coming to an end."
