Milan bourse down 1.45%, Italian spread up 11 pts to 247
(ANSA) – Milan, October 25 – After leading gains in European stock markets on Thursday, the Milan bourse spearheaded continental market loses on Friday.
The threat of a political split in Italy’s centre-right appeared to weigh on Italian markets, with the FTSE MIB slipping 1.45% to 18,874 points.
The spread between Italian 10-year bonds and the German benchmark was 247 basis points, an 11-point rise over Thursday’s 234 points and seven points higher than the Spanish spread. The yield on Italian 10-year-bonds was 4.21%.
The spread is a key indicator of investor confidence in Italy’s ability to weather the debt crisis.
Italy’s main stock market in Milan saw plunging shares at Telecom Italia. Trading in Italy’s largest telecommunications company was suspended three times as it sank 6.41% in frenzied trading to 0.67 euros.
Media company Mediaset lost 3.3% to touch 3.66 euros, while banks also fared poorly.
Banco Popolare and UBI Banca were both down 3.8%. MPS slipped 2.7%, while Unicredit and Intesa SanPaolo lost 2.1% and 1.1%, respectively.
Other European stock markets did better than Milan.
Madrid’s Ibex 35 index lost 1%. Paris’s CAC 40 was nearly flat, slipping just 0.08%, while London’s FTSE 100 gained 0.12%.
Frankfurt’s DAX index rose just above 9,000 points to a new record of 9,010.65 points before sinking back virtually unchanged from Thursday at 8,985.74 points.
The Athex index for the Athens stock market rose 1.37%.