Europe open: Stocks start lower despite strong showing for Macron

Stocks started lower out of the gate as investors digested the latest political news on both sides of the Channel ahead of policy meetings at the US Federal Reserve, Bank of England and Bank of Japan scheduled for later in the week.

As of 0908 BST, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was down by 0.38% or 20.39 points to 388.57, alongside a fall of 0.36% in German's Dax to 12,769.71 while the Cac-40 was slipping 0.37% to 5,279.85.

Following the 8 June elections, markets were openly speculating on the sustainability of the current government in the UK and the implications of the election defeat for the Tories on the Brexit negotiations.

In France on the other hand, investors were reacting to a surprisingly strong showing for the new president, Emmanuele Macron's En Marche!

At the weekend, the centrist party made off with 32.3% of the vote in the first round of the parliamentary elections together with its MoDem.

That put Macron's group on track to garner between 415 and 455 seats out of the 577 in the lower house of parliament.

"While the political situation in the UK has become more complicated, across the Channel, conventional wisdom appears to have been turned on its head as newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron’s new party “En Marche” has swept the board in the first round of French parliamentary elections, no mean feat for a movement that didn’t even exist two years ago, opening the door for a program of large scale reforms, though turnout does look to have been on the low side," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.

Italian industrial production fell by 0.4% month-on-month in April and was ahead by just 1.0% year-on-year, missing forecasts for an increase of 0.2% on the month and 2.5% over the year.

Confidence among French manufacturing sector firms was steady in May, according to the Banque de France's monthly sentime gauge which was steady at 105.0, as expected.

In remarks at the weekend, Unicredit chief said he expected a solution to be found for the country-s two ailing Veneto lender with the aid of other domestic banks.

Shares in Spanish small-cap lender Liberbank shot higher, recouping a large of the previous week's losses when investors sold its stock heavily following the rescue or rival Banco Popular.

Investors in Lufthansa were waiting on the airline's latest traffic figures for the month of May which were scheduled for release at 1000 BST.