European stock markets skid.

Financial News, July, 2002

European stocks fell sharply as a tumble in share prices on Wall Street and trouble sat France's Vivendi Universal made investors nervous.The markets opened down after Monday's plummet on Wall Street - the Nasdaq Stock Market dropped to a five-year low Monday night - and got worse as the extent of the troubles at Vivendi became clearer.

Jean-Marie Messier, the embattled company's chief executive, said he had agreed to resign a day after Moody's Investors Service downgraded Vivendi's long term debt to junk status and said it was considering further downgrades. Shares in the company plummeted more than 40% at one point on Tuesday, hitting 14-year lows. The Paris bourse briefly suspended trading in the shares six times to slow the fall.