Negative US employment data takes shine off markets

NEGATIVE employment data from the US and rising fears – among some of the leading European banks – that the sovereign debt crisis could spread across central Europe, took much of this week’s shine off international stock markets and dragged most of them down heading into the weekend.

The mounting European debt crisis concerns hit Italian banking giant Unicredit and its French counterpart Societe Generale, the latter a major contributor to the CAC in Paris, falling by nearly 3% yesterday.

Elsewhere, the German DAX was down by 1.9% and falling banking stocks (RBS and Barclays, in particular) also dragged London’s FTSE down by over 1.5%.