A Lufthansa plane takes off at Barcelona’s El Prat Airport. Lufthansa shares ended the day yesterday down 2.88% at €12.99.
AFP/London
European stock markets slid yesterday as the escalation of the crisis in Yemen and suspicions a Germanwings co-pilot deliberately crashed the plane into the French Alps unnerved investors.
London’s benchmark FTSE 100 index ended the day down 1.37% at 6,895.33 points, while Frankfurt’s DAX 30 index slid 0.18% to 11,843.68 points and the CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.29% to 5,006.35 points.
The euro yesterday rose to a three-week high of $1.1052, before pulling back to $1.0921, down $1.0973 late in New York on Wednesday.
The euro has come under heavy pressure in recent months, falling to multi-year lows against the pound and dollar on eurozone strains and expectations that the US and Britain would soon raise interest rates.
Oil prices shot up in response, but analysts said the gains were likely to be short-lived as the market is oversupplied.
Meanwhile, shares in Lufthansa tumbled more than 4% after investigators revealed startling information about Tuesday’s crash in the French Alps of a plane from Lufthansa’s low-cost division Germanwings, killing all 150 on board.
The Germanwings co-pilot “deliberately” initiated the descent and refused to open the door to the pilot who was outside the cockpit, the lead investigator said yesterday.
Lufthansa’s CEO Carsten Spohr told a press conference he was “stunned” by the revelations, adding that no security “system in the world” could have prevented the co-pilot’s actions.
Lufthansa shares finished the day down 2.88% at €12.99.
Shares in other airlines also took a hit.
Air France-KLM shares fell 1.28 to €7.61, while shares in IAG, the owner British Airways and Iberia, dropped 3.37% to 587pence.
Shares in Airbus, which had fallen sharply on Wednesday over concerns the crash may have been due to some problem with the A320 which is the company’s top-selling plane, rebounded 2.12% to €60.14.
The DAX is up nearly 21%, the CAC 17% and the FTSE 5% since the beginning of the year.
Elsewhere, Borse Dubai said it had sold its significant stake in the London Stock Exchange, sending the British group’s share price plunging.
The stake is worth £1.53bn according to the LSE share price at the close of trading on Wednesday, at 2,538 pence.
LSE’s share price crashed to 2,395 pence, down 5.63%.
US stocks drifted lower yesterday as the Yemen crisis lifted oil prices amid worries US equities have become overvalued.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.05% to 17,709.06 points in midday trading.
The broad-based S&P 500 shed 0.15% to 2,058.00, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index lost 0.34% to stand at 4,860.06.
