TMT slump continues with France Telecom in vanguard

European stocks clocked up a fifth week of losses, although yesterday's falls moderated in the afternoon.

Frankfurt DAX: 4,232.4 (-13.28); Paris CAC: 3,799.53 (-32.54)

The FTSE Eurotop was off four points at 1,047 in late trade, making a total of about 200 points over the five weeks.

Once again the TMTs were heading downwards. France Telecom, the biggest single casualty this week, fell another 3.7 per cent to a lifetime low of €12.41.

Deutsche Telekom was also at another record low, falling 2 per cent to €9.15.

Among the smaller telecommunications companies, Norway's Telenor fell to an all-time low of NKr26.60.

Media shares were the weakest sector in Europe, led downwards by the biggest stock, Vivendi Universal.

Vivendi fell to a six-year low of €24.45, down 8.4 per cent, in spite of announcing a financial deal to relieve it of some of its debt.

Last week it parked 44 million shares of Vivendi Environnement with Deutsche Bank in return for about €1.4 billion. It will use the cash to cut some of its €20 billion debt, but the deal leaves it with the option to buy the shares back at a later date.

Some of the technology companies managed a bit of a recovery.Infineon was up 3.4 per cent to €15.30, while technology consultancy Altran rebounded 13.2 per cent to €35.50 as the market decided the fears about accounting procedures had been overdone. The shares had lost 33 per cent in the previous two sessions.

But SAP fell 2.7 per cent to €95.26 and ASML was down 3.75 per cent to €14.36. Nokia and Ericsson did not trade because of the midsummer holiday in the Nordic countries but Alcatel was off 1.2 per cent to €8.95.

The struggling French computer company Bull fell 5.3 per cent to €0.54, after saying it expected to post a first-half loss of about €120 million before exceptional items, taxes, restructuring charges and financial costs.