European Shares Flat To Slightly Lower In Lackluster Trade

(RTTNews) - European stocks were flat to slightly lower in cautious trade on Monday as investors awaited earnings from big tech companies including Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta this week for directional cues.

Traders also await a reading on U.S. first-quarter GDP along with the Fed's favored measure of inflation for further clues on the health of the world's largest economy.

Closer home, investors ignored survey results showing that a measure of German business sentiment improved in April for a sixth consecutive month.

The headline German IFO business climate index rose to 93.6 in April from 93.2 in March. Economists expected the reading to edge up to 94.

Elsewhere, U.K. house price growth eased in April, Rightmove said in a report.

On a monthly basis, average asking prices rose by 0.2 percent, down from 0.8 percent growth in March and the average of 1.2 percent growth at this time of year.

The pan European STOXX 600 was marginally lower at 468.81 after gaining 0.3 percent on Friday.

The German DAX and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 were little changed with a negative bias, while France's CAC 40 index slipped 0.2 percent.

Credit Suisse rallied 2.4 percent. The Swiss lender reported over 61 billion Swiss francs (over USD 68 billion) in net asset outflows in the first quarter.

Investment bank UBS Group rose nearly 2 percent after it hired Oliver Wyman to guide the integration of Credit Suisse.

Dutch health tech firm Philips jumped 11.4 percent after setting aside 575 million euros ($631 million) for possible litigation costs related to its global recall of respiratory machines.

Oil & gas firm BP Plc dropped 0.7 percent, TotalEnergies SE was down half a percent and Shell declined about 1 percent as oil prices fell over 1 percent on concerns about fuel demand.

French media group Vivendi fell 1.6 percent after it entered into a put option agreement with International Media Invest for the sale of publishing business Editis.

German steel firm Salzgitter was little changed after its first-quarter earnings almost halved from last year.

Software AG soared nearly 50 percent after the software developer said it would accept a takeover bid by private equity firm Silver Lake.