REFILE LIVE MARKETS-On the radar: Functioning capital markets?

(Removes extraneous words in first para) Welcome to the home for real-time coverage of European equity markets brought to you by Reuters stocks reporters. You can share your thoughts Joice Alves (joice.alves@thomsonreuters.com) and Julien Ponthus (julien.ponthus@thomsonreuters.com) in London.

ON THE RADAR: FUNCTIONING CAPITAL MARKETS? (0652 GMT)

A big difference with 2008 is that capital markets are open for business as today's news flow shows.

French diagnostics company Eurofins just raised 535 million euros in shares to help build up its COVID-19 testing capacities while Norwegian oil company Equinor got $3.4 billion in euro and dollar bonds to secure long-term funding at a time of weak crude prices.

Another successful rights issue was UK insurer Beazley which raised 247 million pounds in fresh capital.

That's encouraging for UK catering giant Compass which launched a 2 billion pound ($2.44 billion) share offer to shore up its liquidity as the coronavirus crisis continues to keep many of its food service operations in offices and schools closed.

As always, cash is king in times of crisis, a dire reality for companies such as British retailer French Connection which warned it could run out of liquidity to operate its business in the coming months without additional access to capital.

Rights issues are not the answer and it's M&A that Germany's Thyssenkrupp is in need of for its steel and warship divisions.

As we approach the end of the Q1 earnings season, trading updates are not that grim this morning.

Swiss hearing aid maker Sonova reported a better-than-expected annual core earnings and cited success from a raft of measures taken to address the coronavirus crisis.

Telecom Italia stuck to its 2020 core profit forecast while in the banking sector, Julius Baer posted a 16% rise in gross margins in the first four months of 2020 but the coronavirus turmoil in markets dented assets under management.

It's of course not always rosy looking further down this year with tobacco group Imperial Brands saying the impact from the COVID-19 pandemic would be more pronounced in the second half of the year.

(Julien Ponthus)

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MORNING CALL: SO MUCH FOR KARLSRUHE EH? (0544 GMT)

There's clearly been a few moments during this crisis when investor started to doubt whether Europe had what it took politically to deliver both the stimulus and leadership required to deal with the pandemic.

Lagarde's "close the spreads" moment or Germany's highest court ruling on the ECB's QE program sure did send some jitters through the euro zone.

But news yesterday that Macron and Merkel had agreed to propose a 500 billion euro recovery fund may very well be a turning point for the better, looking notably at how yields tumbled.

The mood is good this morning, particularly with COVID-19 vaccine hopes fuelling additional optimism.

One would expected some kind of technical fall back after yesterday's 5% surge across European stock markets but not so far.

Futures are trading slightly in the black and gains across Wall Street and Asia overnight are providing extra confidence.

(Julien Ponthus)

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(Reporting by Danilo Masoni, Joice Alves, Julien Ponthus and Thyagaraju Adinarayan)