At 0827 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was up 0.7 percent at 850.29 points after falling in the previous two sessions. The index, which slumped 45 percent in 2008, has jumped 31 percent since falling to a lifetime low in early March.

Elan rose 6.6 percent after the Sunday Times newspaper said that Novartis was in talks to buy parts of Elan, including its flagship multiple sclerosis products and its Alzheimer’s disease pipeline. Novartis was down 0.3 percent.

A spokeswoman for Elan said it did not comment on speculation. A spokesman for Novartis declined to comment.

Novo Nordisk gained 4.4 percent, clawing back most of last week’s losses, on expectations that sales of its modern insulins will benefit from concerns over the safety of Sanofi-Aventis’s rival product Lantus.

Sanofi rose more than 1 percent, levelling out after plunging last week on concerns about imminent new research findings on Lantus and cancer. Details of four European trials highlighting a possible link were made public after the market close on Friday.

But despite Monday’s gains, the European index is on track to close the month in a negative territory after advancing in the previous three months.

“It’s quite clear that we have lost momentum over the last week or so. The strong rally that we saw in cyclicals through the early part of the second quarter has started to fade,” said Darren Winder, head of macro and strategy research at Cazenove.

“But I don’t think this is the beginning of a downward trend. The markets are basically in a trading range at the moment and are looking for signs of economic recovery. And those signs are not going to be there in a very visible way until the autumn.”

UBS fell 1.7 percent. The bank is to pay 3 billion to 5 billion Swiss francs ($2.77-$4.62 billion) in the next two weeks to settle a U.S. tax probe into the bank, Swiss newspaper Sonntag reported.

Other banks were broadly higher. Barclays , Lloyds , Royal Bank of Scotland and Societe Generale were up 0.3-3.2 percent.

Energy stocks were among top gainers on the index as they tracked firmer crude oil prices . BP , Royal Dutch Shell , BG Group , Repsol , Total and StatoilHydro added 0.6-1.7 percent.

Miners got strength from a 1.2 percent rise in copper prices and a 1.3 percent increase in nickel prices. BHP Billiton , Antofagasta , Rio Tinto , Xstrata and Eurasian Natural Resources rose 0.3-2.2 percent.

Anglo American was up 0.4 percent. The Sunday Telegraph reported that the miner was building its defences against a 41 billion pound ($67.74 billion) merger approach from Xstrata by plotting talks about a major Chinese investment.

Across Europe, UK’s FTSE 100 index, Germany’s DAX  and France’s CAC 40  were up 0.5-0.6 percent.

LONDON, June 29 (Reuters)

Not even Warren Buffett was immune to the stock market’s rampant first-half gyrations, as Berkshire Hathaway Inc. notched its worst first half in 18 years, with the shares skidding more than 16%. But only a fool would count out the great Oracle of Omaha, who has spent the past several months restructuring his company’s portfolio and is now ready to come out swinging for the year’s second half.

As Money Morning’s Horacio Marquez noted in his most recent “Buy, Sell, or Hold” feature, Berkshire Hathaway has had a tough start for the year.

The company’s net earnings for the first half were $3.8 billion – a 33% decline from the $5.7 billion reported for the same period last year. But even though the second quarter was weak – especially by Buffett’s standards – it showed marked improvement from the first three months of the year.

Berkshire reported about $1.6 billion in unrealized losses from derivatives in the first quarter. But after warning that derivatives contracts will often “swing wildly,” the company posted $689 million in derivatives gains in the second quarter.

Berkshire’s revenue actually rose 10% to $30.09 billion for the quarter.

But that’s not enough for Buffett, who has set about restructuring his company’s holdings. In the past few months, Berkshire has reduced its investments in Anheuser Busch Cos. (NYSE:BUD) and Trane Inc., and added positions in NRG Energy Inc. (NYSE:NRG), Ingersoll-Rand Co. Ltd (NYSE:IR), and Sanofi-Aventis (ADR:SNY).

According to filings with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), Berkshire in June reduced its stake in Anheuser Busch to 13.85 million shares, less than half the 35.56 million shares it held as of March 31. It’s likely the company received a tidy sum for its shares, as earlier that month InBev SA (PINK: INBVF) offered $65 a share for the American icon. Buffett admits to bailing on the Bud brand before InBev raised its offer to $70 a share, but AB was trading at close to $62 a share on June 30, much higher than the $47 a share the company was valued at in late March.

Also in March, Berkshire dumped its 10.9 million shares of Trane Inc. That stake was valued at more than $500 million as of March 31.

After unloading in the spring, Buffett treated Berkshire Hathaway to a $4-billion shopping spree over the next several months. By the end of the second quarter, Berkshire’s stake in French drug maker Sanofi Aventis had shot up 317,200 shares to reach 3.9 million. Berkshire also added 5 million shares of Ingersoll-Rand, and announced new holdings in NRG Energy, the second-biggest power producer in Texas. Berkshire had 3.24 million NRG shares as of June 30.

Even more interesting, in a move that highlighted Buffett’s bullishness on railroad stocks, Berkshire doubled its stake in Union Pacific Corp. (NYSE:UNP), taking its holdings from 4.45 million shares at the end of March to 8.91 million shares as of June 30.

Last year, Buffett and Berkshire road the rails hard. Buffett made his first move on Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (NYSE:BNI) last April, acquiring nearly 40 million shares – or close to 11% – of the railroad. He then moved on to snap up 10.5 million shares of Union Pacific Corp., and 6.4 million shares of Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE:NSC).

Later in August, Berkshire went shopping again, loading on an additional 3.3 million shares of Burlington and another 6,000 in September. But Buffett didn’t stop there: He added yet another 10,300 shares of Burlington over the two-week period ending Jan. 22, bringing Berkshire’s total stake in the company to 18.2%.

Berkshire’s second-quarter acquisitions, which were disclosed in an SEC filing last week, are only a fraction of the $3.98 billion Berkshire spent on stocks in the April-June period.

Even if Buffett bought the shares at their highest second-quarter prices, which he almost certainly did not, the total cost would only have been about $260 million. That means more than $3.5 billion went into smaller amounts of unnamed stocks the company was not required to disclose.

Where that money went is anybody’s guess, but Buffett indicated in a recent interview with CNBC that a portion of it went into one of two stocks: Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC) or American Express Co. (NYSE:AXP).

Wells Fargo stock has plummeted 22% in the past year, while American Express is down more than 37% in that time. However there may be some clues as to which stock Buffett really believes will rebound in some earlier comments he made.

“We’ll say at American Express… they are experiencing credit deterioration and they’re experiencing it sort of in all segments,” Buffett said earlier on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “So they’re seeing the rich customers slow down in payments, slow down in purchases.

“And American Express can describe that rather than I,” he added, “but I pay a lot of attention to that sort of thing. And incidentally, it will get cured at some time in the future, but right now the situation is getting worse and I would say that I don’t see any early end to that.”

That assessment doesn’t seem particularly favorable, particularly compared with comments Buffett made with regards to Wells Fargo just a few months ago.

“Wells Fargo stock was down last year,” Buffett said, “I don’t think the intrinsic business value shrunk. In fact, I said I thought it probably increased a touch.”

Berkshire already owns considerable stakes in both companies.

Source: Buffett Reignites Berkshire Hathaway with a $4 Billion Spending Spree

Drug companies large and small have renewed their interest in one specific health care sector. It’s a true form of preventative medicine — a rapidly growing field that’s already decimated countless dangerous and deadly diseases.

Now biotechs and Big Pharma are in a race against time. Their mission is clear: Rid the world of the onslaught of superbugs and diseases that could cause the next great epidemic. And they’ll use second-generation technology to create some of the world’s most powerful drug saviors.

There’s money to be made in this field — and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by some of the planet’s top investors…

**********Only 10 Hours Remain **********

Respond Today and Get 50% Off the Millionaire’s Market

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But space is extremely limited. And when the clock strikes midnight tonight, I’ll be forced to close this offer… So, read this before it’s too late…

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George Soros’ resume is nothing short of impressive. His legendary Quantum Fund returned investors an average 42.5% per year for 10 years — a total of 3,365% gains. In 2007, he raked in a staggering $2.9 billion, making him the Street’s No.1 earner for the year…

And then there’s Warren Buffett — an investor who needs no introduction. An initial $10,000 investment in Buffett’s famous holding company Berkshire Hathaway would have been worth more than $1.2 million at the end of last year…

Sure, they’ve made their money by occasionally taking different routes. However, Soros and Buffett are “sharing” some intriguing ideas these days, according to James Altucher, managing director of Formula Capital and author of Trade Like Warren Buffett. The two moguls are putting up big bucks for health care, he says, with a concentration on vaccines…

This bit of info may go against perceptions of Buffett as the ultimate value investor. Altucher claims this is a common misconception. Rather, Buffett is what he calls a “long-term demographic investor.”

That’s why Buffett and Soros are investing in health care and biotech stocks like GlaxoSmithKlein, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi Aventis. These companies have a lot in common — most importantly, they are the world’s most prolific developers of vaccine treatments.

We’ve found an opportunity Warren Buffett can’t get his hands on — an opportunity to get in on not one, but two emerging biotechs in a race to create the ultimate cancer vaccine. More on them in just a minute…

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Superleverage: The Secret to Getting Rich in the Market

Back in 2003, you could have bought AngloCold stock for $32 and done very well when it climbed to $41 three weeks later. That’s a nice gain of 28%…

But if you had used my Superleverage technique, you would’ve turned that 28% gain into 528% in no time flat, with limited risk. See how it works here…

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The New Way to Fight Disease

For years, the vaccine landscape was ruled by the basics — measles, mumps and rubella. And, of course, annual flu shots for the elderly and those affected with immune disorders. The market for vaccines was relatively stagnant. In 2005, vaccines accounted for less than 3% of the global pharmaceutical industry, according to the Wharton School of business.

It just wasn’t very profitable to make cheap flu shots. And the antiquated process of incubating the inactive viruses to go into the shots is time-consuming, and the shots are easily contaminated.

Now we’re looking at a transition to a different kind of vaccine. In fact, we saw the wave of next-generation vaccines hit the development pipeline as early as three years ago. Professors at Wharton saw the transition coming:

“In the past, a lot of attention was paid to the childhood vaccines, but more and more research and development is focusing on vaccines for adolescents and young adults, or even on adult vaccines for diseases such as cancer,” Wharton health care systems professor Patricia Danzon commented more than two years ago. “The health system approach to vaccines really has to adapt to accommodate these new products.”

This quote appears very prophetic today. Just look at Merck’s recent success…

Merck’s most recent quarter, reported in May 2008, saw revenue rising to $5.8 billion, with much of its sales growth attributed to Gardasil, the company’s blockbuster cervical cancer vaccine.

Merck, along with many of the other major drug companies, is in the process of developing numerous vaccine treatments for a variety of diseases — some common, some deadly.

We’ll keep our eyes open. Until next time…

Best,
Greg Guenthner