European blue chips lacked impetus to push past fresh 18-month intraday peaks yesterday afternoon as positive tax news at Dutch telecoms firm KPN was offset by a shock fourth-quarter loss from Germany's Commerzbank. A mixed opening on Wall Street also curbed investors' enthusiasm. ABB fell 3.3 per cent on nerves before its results today. The engineering group is expected to unveil its third consecutive annual net loss due to book losses on asset sales.

By 1434 GMT, the FTSE Eurotop 300 index of pan-European blue chips was down 0.02 per cent at 1,004.9 points, slightly below 1,007.57 hit earlier which was the highest intra-day level since August 23, 2002.

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