European equities ended lower on Thursday, snapping a five-day winning streak, with concerns over tough new Basel regulations and Citigroup"s equity offering getting a cool response and hurting banking stocks, according to Reuters. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index of top shares provisionally closed down 1.1 percent at 1,019.66 points. "The factors that are worrying the markets are Citigroup offering equity at a discount in order to raise capital, concerns about the Fed and then you got the dollar rising," said Peter Dixon, economist at Commerzbank. "There are a lot of things going on, but we are rolling towards the end of the year and investors are taking risk off the table at a time when trading volumes are thin so movements are exaggerated." Banks were the top losers. HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and Banco Santander were down 1.6 to 7.5 percent. Citigroup was down 6.4 percent on Wall Street after it sold $17 billion of shares at $3.15 a share. The sector was also knocked after regulators said big banks will have to set aside more profits or even raise capital protection under new proposals from the Basel Committee on banking. The U.S. Federal Reserve said it will let most of its special liquidity facilities expire by early 2010 and global regulators proposed stricter capital rules for banks.
