(News Bulletin 247) – The Parisian index is moving down sharply in mid-session, while several publications are disappointing investors.

The ball rolling for the first quarter results continues and the score played by companies on Wednesday does not really appeal to the market. At mid-session, the CAC 40 fell 0.9% to 7,464.51 points.

Investors have to digest a slew of company releases and announcements that clearly weigh in on the trend. Especially since market operators have been facing renewed tension on banks since Tuesday, with the difficulties of First Republic Bank, which saw its deposits melt like snow in the sun in the first quarter.

“The coming hours or days will tell us whether the bank is viable or not. In any case, at this stage, like a month ago, we cannot talk about systemic risk. Nevertheless, the market reaction has been immediate with a strong withdrawal of risk taking, with a fall in the stock market and a craze for government bonds”, underlines Sebastian Paris Horvitz, of La Banque Postale Asset Management.

Teleperformance and Dassault suffer

Moreover, the recent rise in European equities leads to a certain degree of caution. “The rebound in European equities since the start of the year is pushing more and more major American institutions to take profits,” said John Plassard of Mirabaud.

To return to the results, the CAC 40 is weighed down by Teleperformance (-12.6%) and Dassault Systèmes (-8.4%).

Teleperformance published growth well below expectations in the first quarter and announced the acquisition of Majorel, a Luxembourg company, for 3 billion euros. This latest operation contrasts with the company’s traditional acquisition policy, which does not usually set its sights on such imposing targets.

Dassault Systèmes, for its part, did not publish catastrophic results in the first quarter. But both its license sales and the growth of its cloud-related activities are disappointing the market.

Another notable decline was that of Kering, which recorded like-for-like sales growth of just 1% in the first quarter, a figure light years away from the superb growth of LVMH and Hermès.

Among the good students are Vinci (+2%), Eurofins (+2.4%), Orange (+2%), Carrefour (+2%) and Danone (+1%), which also published sales or complete results for the first quarter.

On the other markets, the euro gained 0.6% against the dollar at 1.1041 dollar. Oil prices are sluggish. The contract on Brent from the North Sea for delivery in June takes 0.1% to 80.70 dollars a barrel while that of the same expiry on WTI listed in New York, advances by 0.3% to 77.31 dollars. the barrel.