European shares were hovering above the flatline at midday as traders began to wind down ahead of the Christmas break, with investor appetite for food delivery stocks keeping markets in the green.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 was up 0.15% after a positive overnight performance on Wall Street Wall and on Asian markets.
Britain’s FTSE 100 was flat as data showed third quarter GDP growth, before the emergence of the Omicron Covid variant, grew slower than earlier thought, at 1.1%. It was also a marked slowdown from the 5.4% growth seen in the in the second quarter when restrictions were lifted.
Still, significant upward revisions to 2020 data meant that GDP was 1.5% below where it was at the end of 2019, revised up from a previous estimate of 2.1% below. This was tempered by a 2.5% fall in business investment.
In equity news, there was an appetite for food delivery stocks as Delivery Hero rose after the German food delivery group said it would scale down its Foodpanda operations in Germany and sell the subsidiary’s Japan unit.
Just Eat Takeaway.com rose after the food delivery firm announced a deal with One Stop, a British convenience store chain owned by Tesco, to handle orders and deliveries on its platform.
Shares in Sweden’s Lundin Energy fell after announcing that Norway’s Aker BP will buy its oil and gas business, forming the second-largest listed petroleum firm on the Norwegian continental shelf.
