Banks top gainers as European shares bounce back

Oil prices rose on Friday, boosting world stock markets, after an energy organisation said the oil market may have found a floor, while the euro eased.

European shares bounced back, after being savaged on Thursday when the ECB unveiled a new stimulus plan but signalled it was unlikely to cut its negative interest rates further.

Dublin

Bank stocks led a share price surge on the Dublin market.

Bank of Ireland

shares soared, closing up 8.1 per cent at 29 cent, with 120 million shares traded.

Permanent TSB jumped 4.99 per cent to finish the day on €2.90, while AIB surged 4.7 per cent to €8.90.

The ISEQ index of Irish shares closed up 2.4 per cent at 6,341.75 with most of the main players from CRH to Ryanair to Smurfit Kappa ending the day in positive territory.

CRH jumped 4.9 per cent to €24.97, while Ryanair was up 1.4 per cent at €13.72. Smurfit Kappa rose 2 per cent to €23.24.

Paddy Power Betfair was one of the few outliers, falling 1.1 per cent to €120.75. Independent News & Media was also down on the day, slipping 2.8 per cent to 17 cent.

London

UK stocks rallied, trimming this week’s decline, after the FTSE 100 slipped the most in a month on Thursday.

Miners and financial firms, among the biggest losers on Friday, rebounded, with Glencore and Anglo American adding 3 per cent or more.

Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered advanced at least 3.6 per cent.

Marks and Spencer lost 2.1 per cent after Bank of America said sales have probably stayed relatively weak in the fourth quarter. The bank cut its rating on the shares to underperform, the equivalent of a sell.

The FTSE 100 Index climbed 1.7 per cent to 6,139.79, rebounding from a February 25 low.

Europe

Europe’s stocks bounced back, recovering from Thursday’s losses, as traders reassessed Mario Draghi’s expanded stimulus package versus his signal that it might be the end of interest-rate cuts.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index climbed 2.6 per cent to a six-week high, boosted by gains in financial firms and automakers.

Equities from almost all of western Europe advanced, with benchmark indexes from Italy and Spain rallying more than 3.5 per cent.

Lenders from those countries were among the biggest gainers in the Stoxx 600.

More than 560 of the companies on the gauge advanced. Germany's DAX jumped 3.5 per cent, with ThyssenKrupp surging 8.5 per cent after Morgan Stanley gave the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock.

Deutsche Bank jumped 7.4 per cent after people with knowledge of the matter said it's in talks to sell the last batch of a portfolio of complex financial instruments.

US

Wall Street rallied on Friday as steadying oil drove energy shares, putting the major stock indexes on track for their fourth straight weekly gains in more than four months.

US crude pared some of their gains, but were up more than 1 per cent after the International Energy Agency said oil prices might have bottomed as output in the United States and other non-OPEC countries was beginning to fall quickly.

Brent crude was trading at €40.44 a barrel Friday evening.

At 15:35 GMT, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 212.5 points, or 1.25 per cent, at 17,207.63. The S&P 500 was up 28.45 points, or 1.43 per cent, at 2,018.02. The Nasdaq Composite was up 66.03 points, or 1.42 per cent, at 4,728.19.

Microsoft's 1.5 per cent rise was the biggest positive influence on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, while IBM rose 1.8 per cent and propped up the Dow. Additional reporting: Bloomberg, Reuters