Europe open: France's Atos, Unibail-Rodamco launch cross-border bids

Stocks on the Continent are roughly flat despite moderately strong gains in the oil sector, fresh M&A moves by two French outfits and despite fresh record highs on the Dow Industrials and S&P 500 overnight.

Against that backdrop, as of 1030 GMT the benchmark Stoxx 600 was higher by 0.10% or 0.40 points to 389.45, alongside a gain of 0.02% or 2.98 points to 13,126.52 on the German Dax and an advance of 0.15% or 8.29 points to 5,395.54 for the Cac-40.

Oil&Gas was the strongest segment of the market as traders waited on an update about for how long the North Sea Forties pipeline would be closed following the discovery of a crack the day before.

News regarding the Forties pipeline - which transports roughly 40% of the UK North Sea's oil - front month Brent crude futures were 0.89% higher to $65.27 a barrel on the ICE, in turn lifting the Stoxx 600 Oil&Gas sector gauge by 1.28% to 316.32.

Elsewhere, the Stoxx 600 Technology gauge was up by 0.85% to 441.66, bolstered by shares of Dutch Internet-of-Things specialist Gemalto after French consultancy Atos tabled a €4.3bn (£3.84bn) takeover offer, sending the stock's price up by a third.

Despite Tuesday's gains, the pan-European tech gauge was still trading roughly 5% below the roughly 17-year highs hit in early November.

Also in the headlines was France's Unibail-Rodamco after announcing it had decided to go Down Under in search of market opportunities, launching a $16bn (£11.94bn) bid for shopping mall owner Westfield Corp..

On the economic front, the main data release was the ZEW Institute's economic sentiment index for December, which slipped by 1.3 points to 17.4 points (consensus: 17.8).

According to ZEW president Achim Wambach, uncertainty around the creation of a coalition government had had no "significant" impact on financial experts' assessment of the outlook.

Nonetheless, according to Wambach, "Financial market experts, however, expect to see negative effects resulting from this with regard to the Brexit negotiations as well as EU reforms."

Yet was directly at odds with the opinion voiced by Derek Halpenny, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi's head of global markets research, who told Bloomberg TV markets were not pricing in the full positive implications of the prior week's Brexit 'breakthrough'.