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* STOXX 600 at highest since late-Feb
* Banking sector jumps to over 8-month high, BBVA leads
* Moderna's vaccine 94.5% effective in preventing COVID-19
* Vodafone gains on strong earnings forecast
(Updates prices throughout)
By Shashank Nayar and Ambar Warrick
Nov 16 (Reuters) - European shares ended at a
more-than-eight-month high on Monday as positive data from
Moderna Inc's COVID-19 vaccine boosted investor confidence in a
faster pace of economic revival, while signs of recovery in Asia
also helped.
Moderna became the second drugmaker in a week to
report high efficacy for an experimental coronavirus vaccine
after Pfizer made a similar announcement on Nov. 9.
"The more companies that can develop a vaccine candidate
that can be shown to be effective, the more optimistic investors
will be about being able to see a way out of this pandemic and
for economic activity, sort of come back to some semblance of
normality," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC
Markets.
The pan-European STOXX 600 ended 1.3% higher with
oil stocks leading gains on the back of a 4% jump in oil
prices, while banks rose 3.1%, led by Spanish lender
BBVA.
BBVA ended 16% higher and was one of the top three
performing stocks on the STOXX 600 index after PNC Financial
Services Group said it would buy its U.S. business for
$11.6 billion in cash.
The benchmark STOXX 600 has gained nearly 40% from its March
lows and is on track for its best month in nearly three decades.
But the economic disruption arising out of a spike in
coronavirus cases across Europe has led the index to
underperform its U.S. peers this year.
European Central Bank Vice President Luis de Guindos asked
Euro zone banks on Monday to keep using their capital buffers to
absorb losses without holding back credit to the real economy,
which, he said, needs time to rebound from a pandemic-induced
recession.
"The market has already priced in such vaccine news as there
is still a long way for the vaccine to be completely developed
and for economies to genuinely recover," said Keith Temperton, a
sales trader at Forte Securities.
Data showing that China's factory output rose faster than
expected in October and that retail sales surged had helped
sentiment earlier in the day.
In company news, Vodafone Group gained 6.7% after it
said it was increasingly confident about its full-year
performance following a "resilient" first-half, despite
underlying momentum being obscured by the impact of COVID-19.
Italy's Nexi jumped 0.5% after it struck its
second tie-up in six weeks, agreeing a 7.8 billion euro ($9.2
billion) merger with Nordic rival Nets to create Europe's
largest payments group.
(Reporting by Shashank Nayar and Devik Jain in Bengaluru
Editing by Peter Graff and Nick Zieminski)
