By Steve Goldstein, MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Stocks in Europe rose in early trade Friday, with investors shifting their focus to evidence of growing U.S. consumption and away from Greece's capital market troubles.
After finishing with a 0.9% drop on Thursday, the Stoxx Europe 600 (ST:SXXP 268.80, +2.52, +0.95%) rose 1% to 268.97 in early action, with diversified miner Anglo American (UK:AAL 2,956, +47.50, +1.63%) gaining 2.5% on the London Stock Exchange and HSBC Holdings (UK:HSBA 685.90, +8.82, +1.30%) (HBC 51.93, +0.55, +1.07%) up 2.3%.
The gains caught up to the rise seen on Wall Street on Thursday, where data showing the largest increase in monthly sales since 1999 helped markets end higher.
The problems of Greece were still present, however, with yields on 10-year bonds in that country trading around 7.33% Friday morning, compared to 3.10% on German bonds of the equivalent maturity.
"In our view, the recent market action means that an external intervention may be unavoidable and could happen very soon as the situation is untenable. We think an intervention over the weekend is a distinct possibility," said Stephane Deo, an economist at UBS.
The euro (CUR_EURUSD 1.3406, +0.0049, +0.3669%) climbed 0.3% to $1.3392, amid data showing German exports rose 5.1% in February.
The U.K. FTSE 100 (UK:UKX 5,752, +39.36, +0.69%) stock market index rose 1% to 5,768.68, the German DAX (DX:DAX 6,221, +48.93, +0.79%) rose 1% to 6,235.19 and the French CAC 40 (FR:PX1 4,019, +40.68, +1.02%) added 1.2% to 4,026.93.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 28 points.
Of movers in Europe, shares in Swiss flavors and fragrances group Givaudan (CH:GIVN 995.00, +62.00, +6.65%) rose 5.7% after the firm reported a 9.2% rise in first-quarter sales to 1.07 billion Swiss francs ($993 million). Analysts had been expecting sales of 1.01 billion francs. The company said both its fragrance and flavor divisions reported growth, with the strongest gains seen in its fine fragrances unit, where sales rose nearly 27% thanks to a number of new key account wins and customers returning to more normalized order patterns.
Rival Symrise (DE:SY1 18.66, +0.61, +3.35%) climbed 2.8% on the Xetra platform in Germany.
Petroplus (CH:PPHN 21.88, +1.24, +6.01%) climbed over 6% after its PBF Energy Partners investment vehicle reached a deal to buy the Delaware City refinery and 218 megawatt power plant complex from Valero Energy (VLO 20.02, -0.09, -0.45%) for $220 million.
Shares of Swedbank (SE:SWEDA 74.60, -2.65, -3.43%) added 1.9% on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm as the bank said it will leave the state guarantee program immediately, as it hasn't used it for funding since July 2009. During the first quarter, Swedbank has borrowed 100 billion krona ($13.8 billion) outside of the program.
