Europe midday: Banks pace gains after strong GDP data

Shares pushed higher on the back of gains in banks and miners following better-than-expected data out of the single currency bloc and China.

At noon, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was 0.30% higher to 390.35, alongside gains of 0.47% for the German Dax to 12,731.57.

In parallel, come midday Italy's FTSE Mibtel had turned around to trade sharply higher, rising by 1.16% to 20,980.98.

The Stoxx 600's gauge of lenders' shares was the top riser with an advance of 1.26% to 183.08. A subindex of Basic Resource companies was also higher, gaining 0.64% after stronger-than-expected Chinese trade numbers.

According to La Repubblica, Intesa SanPaolo was ready to inject fresh capital into the country's Veneto banks if other domestic lenders were willing to do the same.

Growth in the euro area economy accelerated to a 0.6% quarter-on-quarter clip in the first three months of 2017, up from the 0.5% pace observed over the prior three months (consensus: 0.5%), led by growth in Germany and for investment.

Acting as a backdrop, investors were waiting to see if in his press conference at 1330 BST European Central Bank governor Mario Draghi would sound a more balanced note regarding the balance of risks facing the bloc's economy or if he would retain a slightly dovish bias.

Economists at Barclays expected Draghi to opt for the former; however, the day before Bloomberg cited European officials according to whom the ECB was set to lower its inflation projections, which appeared to run counter to the possibility of the ECB adopting a more balanced approach.

Soon afterwards, at 1500 BST, former US FBI James Comey was set to testify before a Senate panel.

In written testimony submitted the day before, analysts said Comey had not made any revelations that were not already in the public domain.

"Even so, while there was nothing in the written answers that doesn’t mean that something won’t come out when Comey is questioned later today," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.

Lastly, on Thursday night investors would be keeping tabs on the newsflow around the UK elections, although a definitive result might not known until the early hours of the next day.

On a related note, figures on German industrial output published earlier in the day revealed growth of 0.8% on the month for May, which was comfortably ahead of forecasts for a rise of 0.5%.

That led Capital Economics to reiterate its forecast for the pace of economic expansion in the Eurozone's largest economy to accelerate to roughly 2.5% for 2017 as a whole.

Remy Cointreau was on the frontfoot after telling investors to expect better profitability.

Allianz is studying purchasing the stake it does not already own of French trade credit insurer Euler Hermes Group, Bloomberg reported.

Bain Capital and Cinven lowered the minimum acceptance threshold for their takeover of Germany's Stada to 67.5%, while extending the acceptance period until 22 June.

Heidelberger Druckmaschinen told markets to expect operating profit margins for its 2017/2018 fiscal years of between 7% and 7.5%, with sales at the prior year level.