LONDON: European shares extended a slide into a fifth day on Tuesday, with banks falling after a spat between Hungary and international lenders hit its latest debt auction, ahead of results from US peer Goldman Sachs. At 1104 GMT the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index was down 0.6 per cent at 1,000.09 points. The index is down more than 10 per cent from a mid-April peak on worries about debt levels in Europe and the strength of economic recovery, but is up nearly 55 per cent from its lifetime low of March 9, 2009. "IBM was the first company to be showing it is suffering from the impact of the the (stronger) dollar, which a lot of people were neglecting," said Heino Ruland, strategist at Ruland Research, in Frankfurt. "But what is bad for the United States is good for Europe, which will surprise on the upside. "We're going to be in a trading range. If we're not going to get the numbers to boost the markets in the current reporting season, we're going to have to wait another three or four months." Across Europe, Britain's FTSE 100, Germany's DAX and France's CAC-40 fell between 0.6 and 1.1 per cent. Banks featured among the worst performers. BNP Paribas, Barclays, Societe Generale and UniCredit fell between 1.3 and 2.5 per cent. Weighing on the sector was news Hungary had cut its 3-month discount Treasury bill offer by 10 billion forints, pushing the yield out by 19 basis points from a week ago after talks with international lenders were suspended at the weekend. Hungary sold 35 billion forints worth of 3-month bills on Tuesday, lower than its original offer of 45 billion, with bids totalling 52.55 billion, the Government Debt Management Agency said. Elsewhere in the sector, Handelsbanken fell 3.1 per cent as the Swedish lender's quarterly earnings lagged forecasts after higher funding costs more than offset a reduction in bad loans. Among individual companies, Nokia rose 4.2 per cent after a report in the Wall Street Journal suggested the company might soon replace its chief executive. Most others headed lower, however, led by British telecom Cable & Wireless Worldwide, which plunged 17.4 per cent after it said business had been hit by a significant slowdown in UK public sector business following the government's emergency budget in June. IT services group Logica fell 6.1 per cent, one of several companies to suffer after Cable & Wireless Worldwide's warning, and IBM's earnings. Europe's largest biotech, Actelion, rose 4 per cent when it confirmed its 2010 outlook after stronger-than-expected sales of its key heart and lung drug Tracleer, even though its quarterly profit lagged forecasts. Results from Goldman Sachs, due before Wall Street opens, will help investors gauge the health of the banking sector after peers Bank of America, JPMorgan and Citigroup beat analysts' earnings forecasts last week but struggled to maintain overall revenues. US stocks rose overnight, but shares in tech firms International Business Machines and Texas Instruments fell after the market close as their revenue growth disappointed markets. Futures for the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq were down between 0.8 and 0.9 per cent.

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