European shares near 11-week high, UK stocks surge

(Reuters) – European shares hovered near a 11-week high on Tuesday, with UK markets surging after a long weekend, as businesses worldwide gradually reopened following a months-long lockdown.

The pan-European STOXX 600 <.stoxx> rose 1% by 0708 GMT after hitting its highest level since March 10.

Returning from a bank holiday, UK’s FTSE 100 <.ftse> surged 1.9% as Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday Britain will reopen thousands of high street shops, department stores and shopping centres next month.

Aston Martin soared 24.8% after the UK luxury carmaker confirmed that Tobias Moers, CEO of Mercedes-AMG, would become its chief executive officer.

Wall Street futures also rallied 2%, as hopes of further policy support and improving economic data fuelled hopes of a faster economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Paris-headquartered shopping centre operator Klepierre SA jumped 6.7% after saying it had reopened 80% of its European malls and hopes to reopen 90% of them within 10 days.

French carmakers Renault SA and Peugeot SA jumped nearly 4% as President Emmanuel Macron said support for the hard-hit car sector will be “massively amplified”.

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)