Europe midday: Markets muted despite Trump impeachment

European stocks were little changed at noon on Thursday, as Washington's impeachment drama and rate changes in Sweden failed to have much of an impact.

At 1159 GMT, the Stoxx 600 was flat at 414.45, as the German DAX dropped by 0.4% to 13,174.11 and France's CAC 40 fell by 0.1% to 5,956.49. Meanwhile, London's FTSE 100 inched 0.2% higher to 7,557.57.

President Trump was now facing a trial in the Senate after the Democrat-dominated House of Representatives voted to impeach him on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "Financial markets have given the news a collective “meh”, and while US markets finished slightly lower, this news isn’t exactly a surprise to those who follow events in Washington DC.

"The reality is no-one cares given that its highly improbable that the Senate will ratify proceedings, which means the story will inevitably die a death, and while Democrats will be able to point to a political victory ahead of next year’s Presidential election, it’s unlikely to mean that much unless they can get behind a credible candidate to go up against the President."

Meanwhile, Sweden's central bank hiked its benchmark repo rate by 0.25% to zero, ending five years of negative interest rates.

Bloomberg economist Johanna Jeansson said: "The Riksbank raised rates because it had promised to. The bank has expected a slowdown in Sweden and abroad and it’s betting it will be a shallow one. And even if the outlook worsens, the hurdle to move on rates again will be very high. We forecast unchanged rates during at least another year."

Among individual stocks, Swiss chemicals company Clariant was in the green after it agreed to the $1.56bn sale of its Masterbatches business to US polymer provider PolyOne Corp.

Enagas climbed after Zara founder Amancio Ortega snapped up a 5% stake in the Spanish energy company.

Hugo Boss fell after analysts at Deutsche Bank downgraded it from 'buy' to 'hold'.

Swatch dropped after a competition watchdog in Switzerland limited the amount of component shipments that the watchmaker can send to other companies.