European shares close at record highs on financials boost
Adds missing figure in para 4
Infineon jumps 12.9% on Q2 sales beat
Zalando surges on Q1 operating profit beat
French cognac companies up on China's attitude to trade dispute
ECB can't be lenient with structural inflationary forces - Nagel
Updated at 1629 GMT
By Ankika Biswas and Johann M Cherian
May 7 (Reuters) -European shares closed at record high levels onTuesday, with financials stocks in the spotlight following upbeat earnings fromSwitzerland's UBS and Italy's UniCredit, while optimism around interest rate cuts also helped.
The pan-European STOXX 600 .STOXX was up 1.1%, also clinching its best day in over three months, while a market fear gauge .V2TX dropped to over a month's low.
The financials sector .SXFP rose 2.5%, boosted by a 7.6% jump in UBSUBSG.S, after the lender'sfirst quarterly profit since taking over Credit Suisse, wasthree times analysts' expectations.
UniCredit CRDI.MI, Italy's second-largest bank, gained 3.6% to a 13-year peak, steering the banks' index .SX7E 2.3% higher, as it raised its investor reward guidance after posting a much higher-than-expected profit and boosting capital levels.
Spain's main index .IBEX rose 1.5%, with BBVA BBVA.MC up 3.6% after Sabadell SABE.MC rejected the country's second biggestlender's takeover proposal.
Following a rough patch in April during which the main index lost over 1.5%, the STOXX recovery has gathered steam over the past three sessions, but is still lagging its peers in the U.S.
"Inflation is normalising and earnings are starting to pick up again, all at a time when valuations both in absolute terms, and relative to history, and against the United States, is still fairly low," said Maximilian Kunkel, chief investment officer for Global Family & Institutional Wealth at UBS.
On the day, Germany's DAX .GDAXI surged 1.4%, driven by a 12.9% jump in chipmanufacturer Infineon IFXGn.DE after better-than-expected second-quarter sales, with analysts expecting long-term growth despite a full-year guidance cut.
Further, spirits makers Remy Cointreau RCOP.PA and Pernod Ricard PERP.PA jumped 5% and 3%, respectively, after Chinese President Xi Jinping's "open attitude" towards a trade dispute over French cognac.
Theretail sub-index .SXRP also rose 1.4% as Germany's Zalando ZALG.DE gained 8.5% after delivering a better-than-expected first-quarter operating profit.
On the flip side, German software developer TeamViewer TMV.DE dropped 8.1% after a first-quarter results miss, whileDanish medical equipment maker Coloplast COLOb.CO fell 3.5% after a second-quarter earnings miss.
Germany's Fresenius Medical Care FMEG.DE shed 5.5% after onlymaintaining its 2024 profit outlook despite a first-quarter operating earnings beat.
Elsewhere, Britain's FTSE 100 .FTSE hit arecord high, up xx%, boosted by a 1.3% gain in Shell after Reuters reported its plans to sell the Malaysian gas station business.
Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said deep structural changes in the euro zone economy could put upward pressure on inflation for years to come but the European Central Bank should still not tolerate quicker price growth.
Reporting by Ankika Biswas and Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips, Savio D'Souza and Ed Osmond
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