European stocks ended a volatile first quarter with a fall yesterday as US data sparked worries about the health of the US economy, with Germany's Bayer heading the list of losers.

Bayer slipped 1.9 per cent on news it planned to shelve plans to sell genetically modified maize to British farmers because of tight government restrictions and on market rumours - denied by the drugs and chemicals group - of a convertible bond sale.

Talk that insurer Allianz might cut its stake in Bayer further undermined confidence.

Insurers, whose portfolio values gyrate with stock markets making their share tend to move more than the broad market, were major casualties with Dutch Aegon, France's AXA and Germany's Allianz all down more than one per cent.

Auto makers slid on a German magazine report that DaimlerChrysler does not expect its return on net assets, a measure of profitability, to rise back to 8.5 per cent until 2006 from just 2.4 per cent last year.

DaimlerChrysler and domestic peers BMW and Volkswagen all shed around one per cent.

The FTSE Eurotop 300 index of pan-European blue chips ended down 0.3 per cent at 981.5 points and the narrower DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index gave up 0.2 per cent to 2,787.5.

In moderate volumes, losers in the Eurotop outnumbered gainers by around four to three.

The Eurotop 300 is only about 20 points above the level it started the year and down nearly five per cent from the 20-month peak above 1,028 points hit on March 8 before the Madrid train bombings and doubts about US economic growth surfaced.