Intertek and Deutsche Bank help European shares to advance

LONDON, Oct (HKSE: 3366-OL.HK - news) 4 (Reuters) - European shares advanced in early trading on Tuesday, with British testing company Intertek Group (Other OTC: IKTSF - news) leading the market higher after a broker update while Deutsche Bank (LSE: 0H7D.L - news) further recovered after recent steep losses.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index was up 0.6 percent by 0717 GMT, while Germany's DAX, which resumed trading after a holiday on Monday, was up 0.5 percent.

Britain's FTSE 100 rose 1 percent to 7,056.77 points - its highest level since the middle of 2015 and the first time it had breached the 7,000 point level since that period.

Deutsche Bank rose around 2 percent to a two-week high. Its shares had slumped to a record low on Friday before bouncing back on expectations of a swift deal with U.S. authorities over a multi-billion dollar penalty.

HSBC said that despite Deutsche Bank's obvious operational shortcomings, fears over the bank's solvency were overdone.

However, HSBC cut its target price for the bank, forecasting challenging conditions for the banking environment and adding that Deutsche Bank might lose revenues due to the short-term lack of confidence.

Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) in Intertek rose more than 4 percent, the top gainer in the STOXX 600 index, after Jefferies raised its stance on the stock to "buy" from "underperform" and lifted its target price to 4,300 pence from 3,000 pence. (Reporting by Atul Prakash; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)