European shares hit 1-mth low on emerging market jitters

* FTSEurofirst 300 index falls 0.8 percent

* Vodafone leads telecoms stocks lower

* BG slips after warning on production

By Atul Prakash

LONDON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - European shares slipped to a new one-month low on Monday, extending last week's sharp declines and tracking losses in Asia after concerns over emerging economies and the pace of growth in China hit sentiment.

Telecom (Frankfurt: NZT.F - news) shares were the biggest decliner, with the European sector index falling 2 percent, led by Vodafone. The telecom company fell 5.3 percent after U.S. mobile operator AT&T (NYSE: T - news) said it was not planning to take over the British group.

Investors braced for a volatile week as the U.S. Federal Reserve was expected to stick to its planned programme to further reduce its bond-buying operation, which helped equities last year and pushed key indexes to multi-year highs.

At 0911 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European stocks was down 0.8 percent at 1,291.08 points after falling as low as 1,289.08, the lowest level since late December.

On Friday, European stocks suffered their biggest one-day fall in seven months, with the FTSEurofirst 300 falling 2.4 percent and Spain's IBEX dropping 3.6 percent on concerns about economies and currencies in Latin America.

"There is clear risk-off trade going on at the moment and it's all to do with stresses in the emerging markets. The fear is that with tapering happening, these economies as a capital short won't be able to fund themselves and growth will slow," Daniel McCormack, strategist with Macquarie, said.

"With these headwinds in place, the equity market will generally struggle to push higher."

Emerging market currencies from Turkey to Argentina were dumped last week, making investors nervous that the shakeout in markets could lead to a full-blown financial crisis. Investors expect more turbulence in emerging markets after the Fed's likely move to further cut stimulus.

"Sudden fears about emerging markets and also potential capital shortfalls for some European banks are rattling investors. People have been a bit complacent lately, so it's quite logical to get a correction," said David Thebault, head of quantitative sales trading, at Global Equities.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said European banks have a combined capital shortfall of about 84 billion euros ($115 billion).

Among sharp individual movers, shares in UK energy group BG dropped 14 percent after warning that production this year and next would fall short of expectations.

Germany's Merck (Other OTC: MKGAF - news) fell 10 percent after Matthias Zachert, the finance chief of the company resigned to return to synthetic rubber maker Lanxess (Other OTC: LNXSF - news) .

Today's European research round-up

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