Publications
Partners
London - European shares rose in morning trading on Monday, with market sentiment improving after comments by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi raised expectations of further policy easing.
Draghi, speaking at a global central banking conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, said late on Friday the bank was prepared to respond with all its "available" tools should inflation drop further.
"The key message is that Draghi stands ready for more action if needed. Whether they're going to do quantitative easing remains to be seen, but we're fairly confident that the financial engineers at the ECB will find other tools," Franz Wenzel, chief strategist at AXA Investment Managers, said.
The euro zone's blue-chip Euro Stoxx 50 index was up 1.1% at 3 135 points at 09:39 after climbing to a three-week high in early deals. Germany's DAX rose 1.2%, while France's CAC 40 gained 1.1%.
Trading volumes were likely to be thin as the UK market was closed for a public holiday. The Euro Stoxx 50 index's trading volumes were just 6% of its 90-day daily average in the first hour.
Also at the Jackson Hole conference, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen laid out in detail why she felt the unemployment rate alone was inadequate for evaluating the strength of the U.S. jobs market and why the central bank needed to move cautiously on raising rates.
"Overall we think the speech was a balanced assessment of the US labour market, though one can consider it a slight hawkish shift given Yellen's usual dovish stance," Credit Agricole said in an early note.
Among individual movers, Airbus rose 1.2% after saying it was considering a sale of its 49% stake in submarine supplier Atlas Elektronik as part of a reshuffle of its military business, German newspaper Die Welt reported on its website on Friday, citing industry sources. Airbus declined to comment.
Roche Holding shares were up 0.64% after it agreed to buy US biotech company InterMune for $8.3bn in cash.
