LONDON (ShareCast) - - Chinese, UK PMIs beat expectations
- Eurozone jobless rate jumps to 15-year high
- Banks to repay LTROs early

After a relatively positive start, European bourses were broadly lower by lunchtime on Monday as investors digested a barrage of mixed economic data.

Stocks were initially given a lift by some upbeat manufacturing data from China, which saw the nation's purchasing managers' index rise to an 11-month high of 53.1 in March, from 51 the month before. The UK PMI also increased to a 10-month high of 52.1.

However, Eurostat revealed that unemployment across the Eurozone hit a 15-year high of 10.8% in February, compared with 10.7% in January and 10.0% in February 2011. Younger workers have been hit particularly hard by the crisis in Europe, with the unemployment rate across the 27 member European Union reaching 22.4%. In Spain youth unemployment is now at 50.5%, just higher than Greece at 50.4%.

Investors will still be looking at last week's decision by the 17 finance ministers of the Eurozone to boost the region's firewall to €800bn. Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter announced that the amount represents the €500bn ESM, €200bn in EFSF funds already assigned to Ireland, Greece and Portugal, €53bn in bilateral loans and €49bn from the original EFSM.

BANKS PROVIDE A DRAG

Banks were leading the fall by midday with Credit Agricole, Societe Generale and BNP Paribas decline in Paris, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank unwanted in Frankfurt and Bankinter among the fallers in Spain.

Some of Europe’s largest banks are already planning on returning the funds they got through the three-year LTROs (long-term refinancing operations) run by the European Central Bank (ECB) according to senior bankers cited in a front page piece in today’s Financial Times (FT).

French oil giant Total was on the rise on reports that it is preparing to return to the Elgin platform in the North Sea which suffered a leak last week.

IAG was flying higher after the European Commission granted the authorisation needed for the airline to acquire British Midland Limited (BMI) from Lufthansa, adding that competition concerns were addressed by conditions that were part of the deal.

Sector peer Air France-KLM fell despite the company saying it was to increase flying hours for its staff and expand the operations of its low cost Transavia arm as it seeks to return to profitability by 2014.

OTHER MARKETS

Brent futures for May delivery were down 0.34% at $122.47 in London.

The euro was up 0.1% (+0.0013) against the dollar at $1.3357.

BC

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