(Reuters) – European stocks fell more than 2% on Monday amid a global sell-off in equities, with investors fretting over the spectre of tighter pandemic curbs hitting the global economy as cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant surge.
The pan-European STOXX 600 was down 2.3%, hitting its lowest in more than two weeks.
Travel and leisure and mining stocks led declines with losses of nearly 3%, while all the major subsectors were in the red. [O/R]
The Netherlands imposed a lockdown on Sunday, while the prospect of tighter COVID-19 measures ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays looms large over several European countries amid the swift spread of Omicron.
Meanwhile, futures tracking the U.S. stocks benchmark S&P 500 fell 1.5% after U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat who is key to President Joe Biden’s hopes of passing a $1.75 trillion domestic investment bill, said on Sunday he would not support the package.
Goldman Sachs cut U.S. real GDP forecast for the first quarter of 2022 to 2% versus 3% previously, and marginally reduced forecasts for the second and third quarters.
Shares of Novo Nordisk plunged 14.3% after the Danish drugmaker said that it would not be able to meet demand for its new obesity drug due to U.S. supply issues.
BNP Paribas inched up 0.9% after the French lender said it had agreed to sell U.S. unit Bank of the West to Canada’s BMO Financial Group for around $16.3 billion.
(Reporting by Anisha Sircar in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Devika Syamnath)
