Europe's main stock markets were down in early trading on Monday, in a volatile market despite the measures announced by the authorities to try to limit the impact of the collapse of the US bank SVB.

In Paris, the CAC 40 gave up 1.19% to 7,134.57 points around 08:40 GMT. In London, the FTSE 100 gave up 0.59% and in Frankfurt, the Dax lost 1.09%.

The EuroStoxx 50 index fell by 1.27%, the FTSEurofirst 300 by 0.55% and the Stoxx 600 by 1.18%, while the volatility index jumped by 5.0% to 22.22 points.

Wall Street futures foreshadowed a rebound, with the Dow rising by 0.68%, the Standard & Poor's 500 by 1.07% and the Nasdaq by 1.27%, as expectations of a rise in short-term interest rates were revised downwards in the wake of the SVB rout.

The yield on two-year Treasuries fell by 13.2 basis points to 4.45%, a far cry from last week's peak of 5.08%, while investors are now betting with 90% probability on a limited rate hike of 25 basis points in the US.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs said on Sunday that they no longer expected the US Federal Reserve (Fed) to raise rates this month, and saw significant uncertainty beyond March in view of recent tensions in the banking sector.

Operating under the name of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), SVB Financial Group collapsed on the stock market last week after a surprise capital increase to cover a loss of $1.8 billion, following the disposal of a bond portfolio. Since then, the UK has said that it wanted to "avoid any damage" linked to this fall, while in France, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire assured that there was no "specific alert" on the sector in France.

The Fed, for its part, has pledged to make funds available, via a new bank financing program, to institutions in need.

On the stock market, HSBC fell by 1.73% after announcing that it had bought SVB's UK subsidiary for one pound sterling, while French biotech company Innate Pharma gained 1.95% after announcing that it had no financial exposure to the US bank.

The banking sector, down 2.26%, was the biggest decliner on the Stoxx 600, having already fallen by 3.78% on Friday.

In other corporate news, Sanofi lost 1.21% after announcing the takeover of US biotech Provention Bio for $2.9 billion (€2.7 billion), while SAP dropped 1.32% after selling its stake in US data analytics company Qualtrics for $7.7 billion.

(Written by Claude Chendjou, edited by Matthieu Protard)