Lufthansa leads Europe higher - FT.com Lufthansa outperformed a rising market following positive broker comment from JPMorgan on Tuesday morning. The German carrier jumped 3.6 per cent to €10.85 as JPMorgan upgraded the stock to "overweight" from "neutral," citing its exposure to premium traffic and the recent sale of BMI. "With a higher exposure to premium traffic than IAG, we expect Lufthansa to benefit from the current positive premium traffic trends, particularly on the transatlantic," said David Pitura, an analyst at JPMorgan. The Xetra Dax as a whole rose 0.7 per cent to 7,126.67. Daimler continued its recent strong performance, gaining 1 per cent to €47.14 as UBS upped its target price on the German carmaker to €60 from €50. Elsewhere in the sector, Deutsche Bank and UBS raised their target prices on BMW , helping the German carmaker shrug off a recall involving 1.3m of its cars announced on Monday. Deutsche Bank raised its target price on the stock to €68 from €48, while UBS increased its target price to €72 from €68. BMW ticked up 0.5 per cent to €69.09. Pirelli rallied 1.1 per cent to to €9.04 as Société Générale upgraded its price target on the stock to €10.2 from €8.2, citing increased profitability in the tyre manufacturer's developed markets. Elsewhere in Milan, shares in Finmeccanica were briefly suspended from trading after jumping by up to 10 per cent in morning trading after reports that Hitachi was in talks to buy stakes in two units belonging to the Italian defence group. Finmeccanica was up 8.6 per cent to €3.77 in mid-morning. ENI , the Italian oil group, rose another 0.8 per cent to €18.23 as UBS reiterated its "buy" call on the stock, after the Italian oil group announced the discovery of significant gas reserves in Mozambique on Monday. The FTSE MIB itself rose 0.7 per cent to 16,727.86. On the wider market, the FTSE Eurofirst 300 edged up 0.3 per cent to 1,092.51. In Paris, the CAC 40 index edged up 0.3 per cent to 3,512.39. Total weighed on the index, slipping 2.4 per cent to €40.04 after the French oil group was forced to evacuate workers and temporarily shut down one of its North Sea platforms following a gas leak. STMicroelectronics shed 3.6 per cent to €6.17 in morning trading following a downgrade from Société Générale. The broker cut the stock to "hold" from "buy," with worries over the French chipmaker's ability to restructure its ST-Ericsson venture driving the downgrade. "While the full year price to earnings rating still looks attractive, the risk now is that the ST-Ericsson restructuring might disappoint, with an M&A-based ST-Ericsson solution uncertain and still some way off, and the continued need to lift sales still to be achieved," said Peter Knox, an analyst at Société Générale.