People walk to a checkpoint in Greenwich Park with Canary Wharf financial district during sunny but cold weather on January 2, 2026 in London, UK.
Henry Nicholls | Afp | Getty Images
European stock markets were higher on Friday afternoon as a week full of corporate earnings reports drew to a close.
Pan-European Stoxx 600 by the end of the trading session, it advanced 0.9% in advance and recovered the losses of the morning.
Shares of Milan Star The automaker fell 24% after announcing a large-scale business recovery amounted to 26 billion dollars. French auto stocks were also lower on Friday morning Valeo and lost decreased by about 0.4% and 0.7% Renault slip is 3%.
Share prices were weighed down this week by earnings updates from some of Europe’s biggest companies, including the pharmaceutical giant. New Nordiskoil major Shell and various banking heavyweights.
Danish wind producer Orsted rose more than 3% after reporting a 9.8% year-over-year rise in fourth-quarter revenue. Its EBITDA was 25.1 billion kroner ($3.9 billion), in the range of 24-27 billion kroner, with net income of 3.2 billion kroner.
French lender Societe Generale fell about 2% after reporting fourth-quarter earnings.
Mining giants in corporate news Rio Tinto and Glencore both dropped on Thursday after confirming they had dropped out speaks Regarding a potential megamerger that would create the world’s largest mining company. Rio Tinto rose 0.25% in midday trade, paring earlier losses, while Glencore added 1.5%, reversing a morning slide.
“The parties were unable to agree on the terms of the combination,” Glencore said in a statement.
“The key terms of the potential offer were that Rio Tinto would retain the roles of Chairman and CEO and maintain pro forma ownership of the combined company, which we believe would significantly dilute Glencore’s underlying relative value contribution to the combined group, even before considering the corresponding acquisition control premium.”
Both the Bank of England and the European Central Bank were on Thursday hold on interest rates are stable. Britain also took notice when Prime Minister Keir Starmer fell pressureamid controversy over the appointment of his former ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson – his ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein have been called into question by the recent release of the so-called Epstein files.
Yields on UK government bonds – known as gilts – were little changed on Friday morning, and the British pound was 0.6% higher against the US dollar.