Wednesday, CEO of Barclays Bank just resigned was summoned to recieve the question by the British Parliament, making the follow-up improvement of a number of major banks involved in the LIBOR control issue attract the attention of investors, the major bank stocks fell by the impact, and the European major markets financial sectors dropped; on the other hand, the crude oil price declined from a high since last Friday, also limiting the overall trend of the energy sector. The European stock markets’ trading volumes reduced as the U.S. stock market closed for the holiday of Independence Day. The European stock indexes were almost flat with the previous day, with a decline of 0.02%.
The pan-European Dow Jones index closed at 257.33 points, down 0.02%. The index rose more than 1% on Tuesday, promoted by the expectations on new monetary easing measures which will be announced recently by the global central banks to stimulate economic growth.
Among the major European stock market indexes, the French CAC 40 index closed down 0.11% on Wednesday to 3267.75 points: Paribas slipped 0.64%, retailer Carrefour lost 4.95%; German DAX 30 index retreated 0.20% to close at 6564.80 points: public utility company E. ON saw share price give up 1.5%, for its stock has been downgraded by Citigroup and JP Morgan.
UK FTSE 100 index lost 0.06% Wednesday to close at 5684.47 points: Barclays Bank fell 0.63%; HSBC Financial Holdings was down 0.47%; Royal Bank of Scotland moved down 0.92%; British Petroleum lost 0.54%; BP Tullow declined 1.89%, mining giant Xstrata which is carrying on the a M&A transaction and commodities trader Glencore International International slipped 1.79% and 2.73%, respectively.
The ECB and the Bank of England will both announce the respective latest interest rate decisions on Thursday. Market generally expects the ECB will cut its key interest rate by 25 basis points, and Bank of England will start a new round of quantitative easing programme
Among other regional indexes, Spain IBEX 35 index fell 0.71% to close at 7168.50 points Wednesday: Banco Santander edged down 0.28%, BBVA missed 0.97%; Italy FTSE MIB index lost 0.78% to close at 14381.20 points: the People’s Bank finished down 2.29%, St. Paul’s commercial banks fell 3.11 percent.