LONDON – European equities opened in mixed territory on Tuesday, with investors focusing on an emerging battle between vaccine maker AstraZeneca and the EU, and on political uncertainty in Italy.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 hovered fractionally above the flat line in early trading, with chemicals adding 1.1% while travel and leisure stocks fell 0.9%.
Shares of British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca will be closely watched on Tuesday after the EU accused it of not doing enough to resolve a dispute over how many doses it could deliver to the EU. The AstraZeneca vaccine has not yet been approved by the European Medicines Agency, but is expected to be available soon. AstraZeneca said last week that it was facing production problems.
In other coronavirus news, Moderna said on Monday that he was speeding up work on a Covid-19 booster shot for the recent discovery in South Africa. The firm’s researchers said the current coronavirus vaccine appears to work against the two highly transmissible strains found in the UK and South Africa.
Italian equities will be closely watched on Tuesday as a new political crisis emerges. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is expected to resign after a morning cabinet meeting on Tuesday and will try to lead a new mandate. The move comes after weeks of tension between Conte and Matteo Renzi, the head of a junior coalition party in government.
Elsewhere, the US equities futures contract fell slightly Monday night as Wall Street prepared for the core of corporate earnings seasons; General Electric, Verizon and Johnson & Johnson plan to report results before the clock, while technology giant Microsoft will announce its fiscal earnings in the second quarter after the clock. In Asia-Pacific, the stock traded up Tuesday morning.
The earnings come from LVMH, Novartis and UBS on Tuesday. The data releases contain UK figures for November.