gulfnews : Outlook bleak until end of year

European shares experienced a miserable start to the fourth quarter yesterday after the Greek government said it would miss its deficit targets.

The bleak economic outlook is not expected to improve in the lead-up to Christmas with analysts predicting further volatility across global equity indexes over the next three months.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index suffered its biggest quarterly fall since the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers in the period from July 1 to September 30, 2011. Britain's FTSE 100 index had its worst quarterly drop since third quarter 2002, losing £212 billion in value.

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