Travel, tech stocks prop up Europe, energy sector takes a hit
By Sruthi Shankar
(Reuters) - Europe's STOXX 600 inched higher on Monday as surging travel and technology stocks helped counter losses in the energy sector, with investors focused on Brexit-related developments and central bank actions later this week.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index <.STOXX> closed 0.2% higher after rising as much as 0.8% earlier in the session.
Much of those gains were lost as oil majors Total
Markets had rallied earlier on news that AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) had resumed clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine after being suspended last week.
The British drugmaker's shares (NYSE: AZN) slipped amid losses for the healthcare sector, but battered travel and leisure stocks <.SXTP> led the gains in Europe, with British Airways-owner IAG
Europe's tech sector <.SX8P> rose 0.9%, with chipmakers STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), AMS (NYSE: AMS) and ASM International (NASDAQ: ASMI) up between 0.9% and 3.7%.
U.S. chipmaker Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) said it would buy UK-based chip designer Arm from Japan's SoftBank Group <9984.T> for as much as $40 billion in a deal set to reshape the global semiconductor landscape.
Still euro zone stocks <.STOXXE> were up just 0.1% and UK's FTSE 100 <.FTSE> down 0.1%, with gains for both the euro and sterling hurting the exporters.
"It appears to be becoming much more difficult to separate the optimism around the chatter about progress on a vaccine, with the economic reality that tighter restrictions are likely to curtail the current rebound in economic activity across the bloc," CMC Market's Michael Hewson wrote in a note.
Investors waited for UK lawmakers to vote on a bill which the European Union has told London to scrap, raising pessimism over the chances of a Brexit deal being reached before the December 2020 deadline.
Focus was also on this week's U.S. Federal Reserve meeting, its first since Chairman Jerome Powell unveiled a policy shift toward greater tolerance of inflation.
Britain's G4S (OTC: GFS) soared 25.1% after saying that it had rejected a 2.95 billion pound ($3.8 billion) offer from Canadian security firm GardaWorld, saying it was "highly opportunistic".
Exchange operators were caught in a bidding war, with France's Euronext (NYSE: ENX) and Deutsche Boerse
(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; editing by Uttaresh.V)