European stocks open weaker as weekend Greece talks collapse

European stock markets opened weaker and Greek stocks suffered their worst fall in six months as talks between Greece and their creditors collapsed after the reform proposal, submitted by Athens, was rejected as inadequate. The gulf between Greece and the Troika of the EU, IMF and ECB is very wide and there has been failure to come to any agreement on a number of issues ranging from VAT levels, taxations, pensions and surplus targets.  Markets are increasingly exasperated at what they see gamesmanship of fiddling with the detail when the big question of whether the EU, and Germany in particular, has the political will power to bail out Greece or whether to let Greece default and leave the Euro.  We believe that the failure to move the discussion onto bigger issues means that we are unlikely to see any progress in the Eurogroup meeting on June 18th.  The FTSE 100 stood at 6,731, down -0.8%