European Stocks to Watch: Aker Kvaerner
Shares in Aker Kvaerner fell 0.5% as the Norwegian government, SAAB and Investor announced they will buy a strategic stake in the Norwegian engineering group, Reuters reported.
The stake is worth 6.4 billion crowns ($1.07 billion) and follows market speculation that Aker was looking to break away from Aker Kvaerner and possibly sell the nearly $7 billion group to a foreign company, Reuters said.
One reason for the decline in the stock might be that Aker, the holding company of Aker Kvaerner, said it has no plans to return funds to shareholders despite the windfall.
Tesco (Up 2.1%) Shares in the U.K. supermarket chain topped the FTSE-100 as the company announced the purchase of 14,650,000 of its own shares at 422.7503 pence per share ($8.41 per share) from banking services firm Panmure Gordon. The shares will be cancelled.
SNS Reaal (Down 1.6%) The Dutch bank sold 21.2 million additional shares and said its main controlling foundation sold 12.1 million shares at 16.5 euros ($21.45) per share.
EDF (Up 3.1%) Shares in French power group gained for the third straight day and neared the higher end of a price-target range set out by UBS Thursday.
