European stocks fell the most in five weeks after American House Republicans canceled a vote on higher taxes for top earners, fueling concern budget talks will fail.
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, scrapped a plan to allow higher tax rates on annual incomes above $1 million, yielding to resistance from party colleagues. Talks between Boehner and President Barack Obama are already stalled with 10 days to go before the year-end deadline for a budget compromise.
Aeroports de Paris slumped 6.4 percent to 57.99 euros, the biggest decline since August 2011, after cutting projections for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and for traffic growth.
ArcelorMittal dropped 3 percent to 12.81 euros. The world’s biggest steelmaker will write down the goodwill in its European businesses by about $4.3 billion as the region’s weakening economy erodes demand.
Eurasian Natural Resources Corp., a producer of ferro alloys and iron ore in Kazakhstan, slid 2.4 percent to 274.2 pence. The stock was cut to neutral from buy at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Vedanta Resources Plc dropped 2 percent to 1,132 pence. Shares of commodity companies were the worst performing group on the Stoxx 600.
FTSE 100 5,917.64 -40.70 -0.7 %
CAC 40 3,651.2 -15.53 -0.4 %
DAX 7,628.03 -44.07 -0.6 %