Bank giants stabilise after hitting two-year lows

Bank shares began to regain lost ground in early trading today after Friday's stress test results sparked sharp falls among some of the UK's biggest banks.

Barclays is up 3.54% to 215p, RBS rose by 1.27% to 33.41p, while Lloyds climbed 2.85% to 42.5p. Elsewhere, HSBC rose 1.2% to 598p.

Yesterday, more than £5bn was wiped off the value of three British banking giants amid fears eurozone contagion risk would spread to the UK. Lloyds declined 7.5% to 41p, RBS moved 6% lower to 33p and Barclays slid 7% to 207p.

The hit to the banking sector had automatically impacted the value of the London stock exchange, but this morning marginal recovories were seen. The FTSE recovered 0.5% to 5,781.35, while the German Dax climbed 0.97% to 7,176.72 and the French Cac 40 rose 0.78% to 3,679.26.

Meanwhile, the price of gold fell back below its record high yesterday of $1,600, it dropped 0.8% to $1,599 as markets opened this morning.

Investors have flocked to the safe haven investment of gold on the back of continued uncertainty in Europe and the US, say analysts. Silver also rallied by more than 3% to a two month high yesterday, above $40 an ounce.

Last night on Wall Street, the Dow Jones lost nearly 100 points, or 0.76% to 12,385.

The Guardian had reported widespread selling of European bank stocks, including French, German and Italian spreads in the US and trading volumes in Lloyds were particularly high.

The continued controversy surrounding the phone hacking scandal further pushed down shares in News Corporation yesterday, they fell 5% on the Nasdaq.