European shares turn negative; Unilever falls

02 February 2012 @ 04:24 am EDT

European shares turned negative on Thursday morning as some weaker-than-expected results from heavyweights such as Unilever offset the benefits of merger talks between miner Xstrata and commodities trader Glencore .

Unilever fell 3.2 percent after its results. Xstrata and Glencore gained 10.3 and 5 percent respectively.

At 9:09 a.m., the FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> index of top European shares was down 0.1 percent at 1,056.47 points, having been as high as 1,061.25 earlier.

(Reporting by Brian Gorman)

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