Oil majors steady Britain's FTSE after global sell-off

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* FTSE 100 index flat

* BP up 1 pct, Shell gains 0.8 pct

* Financials suffer

By Julien Ponthus

LONDON, May 30 (Reuters) - A rebound by oil majors helped tosteady Britain's blue-chip index after a global sell-offprompted by the political crisis in Italy, concerns about eurozone stability and fresh fears of a trade war between the UnitedStates and China.

The UK's FTSE 100 was up 0.07 percent at 0814 GMTbut spent most of the first trading hour in negative territory.

Heavyweights BP and Royal Dutch Shell added1 percent and 0.8 percent respectively as oil prices steadiedafter falling steeply in recent days on concerns that SaudiArabia and Russia would pump more crude in response to fallingglobal oil inventories and rising consumer prices.

With little corporate news or fresh economic indicators tohelp investors assess the health of the British economy, thefate of the session is likely to be linked to developments onthe Italian political front or on the U.S. trade policy of theTrump administration.

"With little else on its agenda, the FTSE will be hopingthat things don’t take another downturn in the euro zone," saidSpreadex analyst Connor Campbell.

British banks weighed most heavily on the FTSE 100, withLloyds, Standard Chartered, RBS andHSBC down by between 0.5 percent and 1 percent.

European banks are still under pressure after the sectorsuffered heavy losses in the previous session on fears about thesustainability of Italian government debt and the euro zone.

On Wall Street the threat prompted a rush to traditionalsafe havens such as U.S. debt, pulling down U.S. 10-yearTreasury yields and triggering losses for U.S.banks, which registered their biggest one-day decline in morethan two months.

Among smaller UK companies, engineering firm Bodycoterose nearly 7 percent after predicting it would topmarket expectations for full-year profit and said it would pay aspecial dividend.

British discount retailer B&M European Valuereported a 25 percent jump in full-year profit on Wednesday androse 0.2 percent.

Among small-caps, Photo-Me International tumbled 22percent after the photobooth operator's market updatedisappointed investors.(Reporting by Julien PonthusEditing by David Goodman)