European stocks decline on financials (MarketWatch) (06-05-2008)

LONDON (MarketWatch) - European markets were trading lower on Tuesday, hurt by declining stocks the likes of UBS, Lloyds TSB and Swiss Re, which had credit-market losses to report, and which offset gains in resource stocks due to the sharp rise in oil prices.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index lost 0.5% to 326.79, having gained around 12% since the middle of March. The Stoxx 600 is still showing losses of around 11% for 2008.

Regionally, the German DAX 30 index fell 0.5% to 7,018.61, while the French CAC-40 index slipped 0.4% to 5,042.06.

The U.K. FTSE 100 index performed marginally better, down 0.3% to 6,198.70, as trading restarted after a long holiday weekend and as companies attuned to commodity prices made strong gains.

NYSE Euronext holds 40% of French trading services firm GL Trade, shares of which shot up 12.3% in Paris after it said late Monday that its shareholders are looking at options for the company.

Turning to the miners, and shares of Rio Tinto rose 3.2%, while shares of copper extractor Vedanta Resources climbed 3.4%.

Gold prices moved up $5.50 to $879.30 an ounce, while crude prices continued to flirt with $120 a barrel.

  Source MarketWatch