European shares turn positive

European shares turned positive in early trade on Wednesday as gains in defensive food producers and drugmakers outpaced falls in the banking sector.

By 8:25 a.m. British time, the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index of top shares was up 0.2 percent at 1,055.62 points after falling to a low of 1,051.40 earlier in the session.

Among defensive stocks, brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev, Nestle and Unilever were up 0.4 to 1.8 percent, while drugmaker UCB gained 4.6 percent.

However, Societe Generale fell 4.2 percent after the French bank, which suffered record trading losses in 2008, took a new hit of 1.4 billion euros ($2.03 billion) from risky assets.