European shares join global plunge as banks tumble

LONDON (Reuters) - European stocks tumbled at the open on Friday, tracking plunges in Asian and U.S. equities as investors feared world governments' attempts to unlock credit markets would not be enough to ward off a global recession.

At 3:13 a.m. EDT, the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index was down 8 percent at 847.8 points, after hitting its lowest level since July 2003. The index has fallen more than 22 percent so far this week, on track for its worst week on record.

Battered banks led the decline, with Barclays off 15.6 percent, Santander down 9.8 percent and HSBC down 4.3 percent. Oil shares also tumbled, with BP and Royal Dutch Shell down 8 and 5.9 percent, respectively, as crude fell 4.6 percent.

The U.S. government is weighing guaranteeing billions of dollars in bank debt and temporarily insuring all U.S. bank deposits, in a bid to unfreeze bank lending and staunch massive losses in equity markets, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Japan's Nikkei 225 fell nearly 10 percent on Friday, while Wall Street's Dow Jones industrial average shed more than 7 percent on Thursday.

"The stark reality is that markets have judged the co-ordinated interest rate cut not to have been enough, and we are now left wondering how best to get ourselves out of this downward spiral," said Chris Hossain, senior sales manager, ODL Securities. "One gets the feeling that this market is now strictly confined to the brave."

Britain's FTSE 100, France's CAC and Germany's DAX were all trading down about 8 percent, having earlier fallen as much as 10 percent.

(Reporting by Rebekah Curtis)

(Additional reporting by Atul Prakash)