Panic selling engulfs European shares

Frankfurt, Oct 10 (DPA) European shares plummeted Friday as panic selling spread from Asia and the United States on renewed fears about the economic fallout from the global credit crisis.

As trading was launched, the benchmark Stoxx 50 had fallen by 7.5 percent to 2120 points after shares on Wall Street dropped to their lowest in five years Thursday and Tokyo's Nikkei index cascaded down by about 10 percent.

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The fresh wave of worries drove up the gold price by more than four percent with the deepening concerns about the economic outlook sending the oil price down by about five percent.

Shares on the London stock market plunged sharply Friday, with the Financial Times Share Index nearly 400 points down, falling to 3,887.7 points.

The plunge of nearly 10 percent saw the FTSE-Index fall below the 4,000-point mark for the first time in five years.

Two days after the government's major bail-out package, bank shares fell dramatically, with Barclays, HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland among the main losers.