(Reuters) – European stocks struggled on Monday after their worst weekly showing since February, held back by a growing number of risks including signs of inflation, elevated bond yields and China Evergrande’s financial troubles.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index slipped 0.2% by 0718 GMT, holding near a two-month low hit in last week’s selloff.
Banks, automakers and luxury stocks were the top decliners on fears of a slowdown in global growth as the world’s second largest economy deals with fresh COVID-19 restrictions, a property sector slowdown and regulatory clampdowns.
French luxury stocks Kering and LVMH, which draw a major portion of their revenue from China, fell 1.9% and 1.5% respectively.
Morrisons fell 3.8% after U.S. private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) won the auction for Britain’s supermarket group with a 7 billion pound ($9.5 billion) bid.
Rivals Tesco and Sainsbury inched up.
UK telecoms group BT Group and Nordea Bank were the top losers on STOXX 600, down more than 6% each.
(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
