European Stocks Rise Led By British Airways Results

Frankfurt, Germany (AHN) - European stocks advanced over the reports that British Airways PLC doubled annual profit on higher trans-Atlantic business travel; and British Energy Group is still in takeover process.

Shares of the airline industry got a boost after Europe's third-largest carrier, British Airways, rallied in London markets, which is the carrier's biggest gain since May 19, 2006.

It was trading up by 7.8 percent after the company announced the it will pay the first dividend since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks of 5 pence a share for the year that just ended.

The company reported that the operating profit surged to 141 million pounds, and revenue increased by 10.3 percent to 2.1 billion pounds.

However, the company predicted that it may experience a difficult first quarter over rising oil prices and troubled opening incidents of a new terminal at London's Heathrow Airport.

The pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 edged up by 1.07 percent to 328.41 on Friday at 12:09 p.m. in London, after it gained for most of the early morning trading led by positive sentiment.

In late morning trade session in London at 10:51 a.m., the FTSE 100 was moving up by 84.80 points or 1.36 percent at 6,336.60 points. Frankfurt's DAX was advancing by 88.70 points or 1.25 percent at 7,169.75 points.

At the same time, the CAC 40 in Paris was increasing by 45.47 points or 0.90 percent at 5,102.98 points.

In energy industry, stocks of British Energy, the U.K.'s biggest nuclear-power producer, added as much as 5.4 percent after it reportedly got many takeover bids.

While, Royal Dutch Shell was increasing by 1.8 percent in Amsterdam after the firm reported that it was planning to raise oil production at a refinery in Ontario to catch up with the delays in output following a week of unscheduled maintenance.

As oil prices hit new record levels, Finnish refiner Neste Oil gained by 4.6 percent, followed by Spain's Repsol adding 1.3 percent and Italy's Eni advancing by 1.7 percent.