Upbeat U.S. Jobs Report Calms European Markets

(RTTNews) - European stocks rebounded from their biggest daily losses in more than a year Friday, as an upbeat U.S. jobs report soothed fears about the global economy.

Markets around Europe had been in a dour mood all week, with the selloff intensifying yesterday after the European Central Bank gave no indication it plans to announce further stimulus.

The mood was lifted this morning when the Labor Department said that the U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 5.9 percent, its lowest level in over six years.

The report said non-farm payroll employment jumped by 248,000 jobs in September following an upwardly revised increase of 180,000 jobs in August.

The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone bluechip stocks rose 0.91 percent, but was down 2.64 percent for the week.

Around Europe, France's CAC 40 was up about 0.9 percent and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 picked up 1.26 percent, while the German market was closed for a public holiday.

Shares of easyJet Plc jumped more than 6 percent in London after the airline lifted its profit forecast for fiscal 2014, reflecting a strong finish to the year, as well as higher revenues following strikes at a rival airline.

Miners continued to struggle on falling commodity prices. Fresnillo lost nearly 4 percent, while Antofagasta was down 2.7 percent

Amec Plc rose 4.5 percent. In a trading update, the British engineering firm said it expects to see modest underling revenue growth in fiscal 2014.

Debenhams Plc added 2.9 percent after Sports Direct, the retailer run by its mecurial founder Mike Ashley, said it had bought a further 4.60 percent stake in the department store chain for about 33 million pounds.

Iliad SA lost 1.8 percent in Paris on a Bloomberg report that the French telecoms operator is priming to float a bid for a significantly larger chunk of T-Mobile US, Inc.

In economic news, Euro zone retail sales rose 1.2 percent in August from July, when they declined 0.4 percent, data from Eurostat showed. The latest growth was the strongest since December 2009, when sales rose 1.3 percent. It was also the fastest growth in nine months and equaled the gain in November 2013. Economists had forecast a modest 0.1 percent gain.

Separately, Eurozone's composite purchasing managers' index was revised downwards in September, final figures from Markit Economics showed. The Markit PMI composite output index was revised to 52 from the flash estimate of 52.3, logging a ten-month low. Economists had expected the PMI to remain unrevised from the flash estimate.