The FTSE Eurofirst 300 was up 0.2 percent to 1,366.30, a new four and a half year high, on Tuesday, largely on advances in the automobile manufacturing sector.
BMW added 2.9 percent to €41.87 after having gone as high as €42.57 earlier in the day. The gain came after UBS upgraded the company’s shares to “buy” from “neutral” and increased its target share price to €49, up from €37. Elsewhere in the sector, Volkswagen was up 2.7 percent to €57.66 and Peugeot gained 3.6 percent to €49.77.
Mergers and acquisitions were still on the agenda. In the banking sector, Millennium BCP, Portugal’s largest publicly traded bank, gained 4.5 percent to €2.54 on a largely positive response to its bid for Banco BPI, a smaller competitor. BPI’s shares dropped 2.8 percent to €5.68 on the news.
Stock market operator Euronext reported slightly higher than expected profits in 2005 and said it was interested in merging with Deutsche Borse. Euronext’s shares dropped 1.1 percent on the news, to €60.95, while Deutsche Borse gained 2.1 percent to €114.20.
Elsewhere, Deutsche Post was down 7.1 percent to €21.11 as it warned that its express courier service in the US could lose more money and predicted that group operating profits in 2006 would be flat.