Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- European stocks rose for a seventh day, their
longest winning streak this year, as data showed China’s economic growth
accelerated for the first time in three quarters. U.S. index futures
and Asian shares also gained.Schindler Holding AG jumped the
most since November 2011 after saying it will buy back shares. Cap
Gemini SA rose 2.6 percent after saying it began talks to buy Areva SA’s
software-services unit. Grifols SA fell 3.1 percent after an investor
sold a stake.The Stoxx Europe 600 Index advanced 0.3 percent to
316.96 at 8:12 a.m. in London. It has climbed 1.7 percent this week as
U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law a measure extending the
government’s borrowing authority until early 2014 and ending a
government shutdown that started Oct. 1. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index
futures gained 0.1 percent, while the MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 0.3
percent.“China’s GDP figures reported a steady growth rate
coming out in line with expectations,” Jonathan Sudaria, a trader at
Capital Spreads in London, wrote in a note. “Bulls will be content with
the fact that the recent downward trend of the last two quarters has
been broken.”In China, gross domestic product increased 7.8
percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the National Bureau of
Statistics said. That matched the median estimate of economists in a
Bloomberg survey. The world’s second-biggest economy posted GDP growth
of 7.7 percent and 7.5 percent in the first two quarters, slipping from a
7.9 percent expansion in the final three months of 2012.
