European Stocks Decline as Carmakers, Mining Companies Drop

European stocks declined, erasing their earlier gains, as shares of carmakers and commodity companies dropped.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index lost 0.3 percent to 241.26 at 2:55 p.m. in London, after earlier advancing as much as 0.6 percent. The gauge rallied 2 percent in the previous three sessions as investors turned attention from the debt crisis to U.S. data that showed the recovery in the world’s largest economy is gathering pace.

The European (SXXP) Central Bank’s balance sheet soared to a record after it lent financial institutions more money last week in an attempt to keep credit flowing to the economy during the debt crisis.

Lending to euro-area banks jumped 214 billion euros ($280 billion) to 879 billion euros in the week ended Dec. 23, the Frankfurt-based ECB said in a statement today. Its balance sheet increased 239 billion euros to 2.73 trillion euros, it said.

Italy today sold 9 billion euros ($11.8 billion) of six- month Treasury bills at half the yield it agreed to pay at an auction of the securities last month. The Rome-based Treasury sold the 179-day bills at a rate of 3.251 percent, down from 6.504 percent on Nov. 25. Demand was 1.7 times the amount on offer, compared with 1.47 times last month.

Italy also sold 1.733 billion euros of 2013 notes today to yield 4.853 percent, compared with a yield of 7.814 percent at the last auction on Nov. 25. The bid-to-cover ratio was 2.24, compared with 1.59 last month. Tomorrow Italy will auction four different securities, including a 10-year bond.

Lower Risks
“The odds to have a real problem in Italy in 2012 are much lower today than what they were three or four months ago,” said Jean-Paul Jeckelmann, chief investment officer at Banque Bonhote & Cie. in Neuchatel, Switzerland, who helps manage $1.4 billion in equities. “While today sets a hopeful basis, the real test is what happens with the long-term financing, which is much more difficult for investors and banks to carry in their books.”

Britain faces the “toughest” job market in two decades with the number of working people likely to fall by 120,000 in 2012, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said.

“The U.K. jobs market will be weaker than at any time since the recession of the early 1990s,” John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the CIPD, an association for human-resource professionals, said in a statement. “The combination of worsening job shortages for people without work, mounting job insecurity and a further fall in real earnings for those in work may test the resilience and resolve of the U.K. workforce far more than it did in the recession of 2008-9.”

Greece will hold national elections at the end of April, state-run Athens News Agency reported, citing Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos. The new poll date provides the government of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos more time to complete a new financing agreement and a debt swap, the newswire reported.