Telecom Helps Lift European Markets

European markets were bounding back, partly helped by today's rally on Wall Street.

In London, strength in telecoms and bank stocks brought the

FTSE 100

back to life at midmorning, but the blue-chip proxy gave back some of that strength in afternoon trading. The FTSE ended the day up 39.90 to 6327.20.

The FTSE opened down after information technology firm

Sema

( SEMA) warned that its results for the second half of this year would miss targets.

But strength in telecoms like

Voadfone

(VOD) - Get Report

and

British Telecom

(BT)

and banks like

Barclays

(BCS) - Get Report

won out and lifted the index into the green.

Over on the continent, the

Xetra Dax

in Frankfurt stormed higher, lately up 90.03 to 6691. The

CAC-40

in Paris was up 100.61 to 6153.65.

The beleaguered euro was lately trading at $0.8399.

Asian equity markets closed mixed overnight.

In Tokyo, gains in high-tech stocks offset weakness in banks, which fell on credit risk worries. High tech stocks rose partly on strength in U.S. tech futures overnight. The

Nikkei 225

added 14.04, or 0.10%, to 14,315.35.

The greenback jumped higher to 111.19 yen.

Hong Kong's

Hang Seng

index fell on weakness in telecom stocks on concerns over the Chinese governments plans to change mobile phone tariff regulations. Shares in China's two biggest cellular phone operators

China Mobile

and

China Unicom

led losses on the index, which closed down 1.28% to 14,376.90.

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