Market Update
European equities rose early Thursday, tracking gains in most Asian markets, and as individual stocks remained in focus on earnings news.
At 12:45 p.m. (I.S.T.), Britain's FTSE, France's CAC and Germany's DAX rose 0.7% to 0.8%.
Markets climbed early, shrugging off the resignation of the IMF chief Dominique-Strauss Kahn, known to be a key player working towards resolving the Euro-Zone debt crisis, who was recently arrested in the United States on charges of sexual assault.
Financials were broadly higher across the region with Barclays, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Deutsche Bank gaining between 0.2% and 1.3%.
Metal stocks also rose, boosted by leading Swiss commodity trader Glencore, whose IPO is widely expected to be successful: miners BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Anglo American added 1.1% to 1.7%, even though base-metal prices dropped in Asian trading after the CME upped margin requirements for metal-futures trading.
In earnings-driven movers, technology firm Invensys dropped 6.4% in London following its results declaration, while Air France rose 1.6% on its numbers.
Elsewhere, Asian markets were trading mostly higher but Japanese equities were soft on weak economic data.