Financials feel the force of EM sell-off Financial stocks in Europe most exposed to emerging market assets found themselves nursing heavy losses as the EM sell-off gathered pace. The region's EM and periphery equity markets were particularly hard hit - Turkey's BIST 100 index fell 4.7 per cent, while Spain's Ibex and Italy's MIB both made losses in excess of 2 per cent. Austria-listed financial duo Raiffeisen International and Erste Bank were among the biggest fallers, down 5 per cent to €25.60 and 5.5 per cent to €24.10, respectively. Both banks have operations in eastern European markets. Germany's Commerzbank also stood at the bottom of the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index, down 5.5 per cent to €8.45, while Dutch bank ING fell 5.2 per cent to €8.22 and France's Société Générale shed 4.7 per cent to €32.81. Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo fell 4.4 per cent to €1.45. Shares in Italy's UBI Banca had been higher in early trade after forecast-beating second-quarter earnings. However, market momentum left the stock 3.4 per cent lower at €3.33 by the close. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 ended the session 1.7 per cent lower at 1,202.36. "The uncertainty is being created by the potential for some form of military action in Syria, political uncertainty in Italy and the timing of a Fed tapering programme," said Michael Hewson at CMC Markets. Carmakers were the weakest industry group on the pan-European index. Germany's Daimler fell 4.8 per cent to €52.89, despite winning a domestic court appeal to overturn the suspension of sales of Mercedes-Benz models that use a coolant EU regulators want to ban. France's Renault fell 4.7 per cent to €56.45 and Italy's Fiat lost 3.7 per cent to €5.78. Few stocks were on the positive side of the Eurofirst index, most of them London-listed after UK investors returnedafter Monday's public holiday. OMV , the Austrian oil company, climbed 1.5 per cent to €35.47 after SocGen raised its target price on the stock €38 from €35.