Europe’s STOXX 600 falls as tech, banks drag

The pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.3%, as of 0814 GMT, with the technology sub-index losing around 1% and euro zone banks slipping 1.3%.

Carlsberg Group dropped close to 8% after Britvic rejected its takeover bid, citing that the proposal “significantly undervalued” the group and its prospects. Shares of Britvic jumped more than 11%.

Still, the European benchmark was on track for modest weekly gains, following a more than 2% drop last week when markets were rattled after French President Emmanuel Macron had called for a snap parliamentary election.

“We are gingerly recovering, but the volatility will remain with regards to the French elections going forward until the first date of the election,” said Axel Rudolph, senior market analyst at IG Group. On the data front, German business activity slowed in June and France’s services sector contracted more than expected in the same period, while a broader euro zone reading showed that business growth in the bloc slowed sharply this month as demand fell for the first time since February. Government bond yields across the continent slipped after the data was released earlier in the day, while the euro was last down 0.1% against the dollar. In the UK, data signalled that British retail sales jumped sharply last month, rebounding from a revised 1.8% decline in April.

The blue-chip FTSE 100 was down 0.3% at 8251.94 points.

Global investors remained risk-averse after both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed lower overnight, as a rally in U.S. bellwether Nvidia appeared to fizzle out.

“If we were to see some profit-taking in the U.S. markets today, that would probably drag down European indexes,” IG Group’s Rudolph said.

Among other stocks, Denmark’s Zealand Pharma jumped 19.6% after an early-stage study showed a high dose of its drug helped reduce weight by an average 8.6% after 16 weekly doses.

British discount chain B&M fell 1.6% after Morgan Stanley lowered its rating to “underweight” from “equal-weight”.

Shares of ABB shed about 3% after Deutsche Bank downgraded the Swiss engineering group to “sell”.