European shares inch up, food delivery stocks jump

European shares edged higher on Wednesday led by gains in food delivery stocks even as worries persisted about the outlook for global recovery amid an increase in COVID-19 cases due to the Omicron variant.

The pan-European STOXX 600 climbed 0.1 per cent as of 0821 GMT after jumping 1.4 per cent to its best day in two weeks in the previous session.

Just Eat Takeaway.com rose 5.1 per cent after the food delivery firm announced a deal with One Stop, a British convenience store chain owned by Tesco, to handle orders and deliveries on its platform.

Germany's Delivery Hero jumped 6 per cent after saying it would scale down its Foodpanda operations in the country and sell the subsidiary's Japan unit, citing increased competition and labour shortages.

Germany is set to introduce new measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 before New Year's Eve, including limiting private gatherings for vaccinated people to a maximum of 10 people.

Belgian visual tech firm slumped 6.9 per cent after saying component shortages caused delays that affected its third-quarter sales and forecast.