On Friday, Europe’s main stock market indices opened to a mostly cautious rise. The broad Stoxx Europe 600 index was up around 0.3 percent a little after ten.
Germany’s DAX index opened up 0.2 percent, France’s CAC 40 index up 0.3 percent. In London, the FTSE 100 index rose to 0.5 percent.
Among other things, a British manufacturer of pharmaceuticals and healthcare and hygiene daily goods started to rise rapidly Reckitt Benckiser.
Reckitt’s share was up 11.2 percent after Reckitt’s subsidiary and American Abbott Laboratories were acquitted of charges that they had concealed the risk of intestinal disease associated with their infant formula.
In the Stoxx Europe 600 index, the most upbeat sector was energy, where the vast majority of companies were on the rise. An exception was, for example, a Finnish fuel company In this (-0,4 %).
Listed in London Shell (+1.5%) rose for the second day after reporting a better-than-expected result on Thursday. In connection with that, the company also said that it plans to buy 3.5 billion dollars worth of its own shares.
On Friday, the US oil and gas giants will report their results ExxonMobil and Chevron.
More broadly, oil companies will also be cheered up by the increased price of crude oil on Friday. British BP was up 1.4 percent, as was the French TotalEnergieswhich reported weaker-than-expected earnings earlier this week. Italian Eni was up by about 1.0 percent.
Oil prices hurt on Friday after the American media Axios reported that Iran might be preparing to attack Israel in the next couple of days. Axios says that the information is based on Israeli sources, and the news has been quoted by Bloomberg, among others.
At the time of the review, the international crude oil reference price Brent was up almost three percent at just under 75 dollars per barrel. From the beginning of the week, the price of Brent reached its lowest point of just under 71 dollars per barrel, when Israel’s most recent attacks on Iran had not targeted Iran’s oil infrastructure.
Iran is part of OPECIA, an organization of oil exporting countries, and has increased its oil production significantly in recent years.
Last year, Iran was the fourth largest producer of crude oil among the OPEC countries, and it plays a regionally significant role as an oil country, even though Iranian oil is subject to US sanctions.
Although Israel has so far not targeted Iran’s oil infrastructure, the Israeli military leadership has made it clear that any further Iranian attacks would be met with force.
Source: www.arvopaperi.fi
