European Shares Tumble Amid Tech Selloff and Global Cyber Outage

European shares experienced significant weekly losses due to a selloff in technology stocks, downbeat earnings, and falling commodity-linked stocks. A global tech outage further hampered financial operations. The pan-European STOXX 600 index recorded a 2% weekly decline, its largest this year, amid investor uncertainties and market upheavals.

European shares faced notable weekly declines as a selloff in technology stocks, disappointing earnings reports, and falling commodity-linked shares weighed heavily on the market.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index closed 0.8% lower, marking a weekly fall of over 2%, the most significant drop this year. A sweeping global cyber outage disrupted trading activities across various sectors, affecting operations from London to Singapore, though partial recovery was underway.

Italy's FTSE MIB index resumed regular updates after encountering issues due to the IT outage, ending down by 0.9%. Travel and leisure shares fell 2.1%, led by an 8.3% drop in Sweden's Evolution after missing quarterly expectations. Miners and energy shares saw declines due to lower commodity and crude oil prices, respectively.

Michael Field, Morningstar's European market strategist, noted that high valuations made tech stocks particularly vulnerable to market sentiment shifts. The European market grappled with US political developments and potential trade rule changes, exacerbating the tech stock rout.

Lack of clear policy direction from the European Central Bank added to investor uncertainty. Sartorius and Ubisoft saw significant declines due to earnings disappointments, while Danske Bank and Tomra experienced gains following better-than-expected results.

(With inputs from agencies.)