Piazza Affari worsened in the afternoon session, dragged down by a sharp decline in banking stocks and a significant drop in Leonardo, coinciding with a mixed start on Wall Street amid expectations for developments in the ongoing US-China tariff negotiations.
Around 16:50 local time, the FTSE Mib index was down 0.5%, hitting session lows.
The banking sector index lost 2.1%, with Unicredit and Intesa both falling more than 2%, while Pop Sondrio and Bper dropped over 3%.
Leonardo plunged 4.7%, marking its lowest level since May 19. Despite this pullback, the stock is still up over 91% since the start of the year, buoyed by strong buying in the European defense sector following announcements of rearmament by Western countries.
Additionally, several brokers today cited reports from Il Corriere della Sera suggesting that the Leonardo-Rheinmetall consortium is the frontrunner to acquire the defense division of Iveco (+0.75%), IDV, with a bid of around €1.5 billion.
(Reporting by Giancarlo Navach, editing by Andrea Mandalà)
