European stocks close:

European stocks rose, erasing an earlier decline, as companies from Deutsche Telekom AG to Repsol YPF SA posted better-than-estimated quarterly profit.

Greece’s former finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, received a three-day mandate from President Karolos Papoulias today to attempt to form a coalition government. Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the left-wing Syriza coalition, yesterday abandoned his attempt to form a government, forcing Papoulias to turn to Pasok, which came third in the elections.

In the U.K., the Bank of England’s nine-member Monetary Policy Committee halted its program of bond purchases at 325 billion pounds ($525 billion), ending a second round of stimulus, as predicted by 43 of 51 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.

National benchmark indexes rose in every western-European market except Switzerland and Iceland. France’s CAC 40 added 0.4 percent and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 rose 0.3 percent. Germany’s DAX gained 0.7 percent. Spain’s IBEX 35 Index surged 3.4 percent while Greece’s ASE Index rallied 4.2 percent.

Deutsche Telekom climbed 3 percent to 8.80 euros. Europe’s second-largest telephone company reported first-quarter earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation that slipped 0.1 percent to 4.48 billion euros ($5.8 billion).

Repsol YPF rallied 8.2 percent to 14.21 euros, its largest gain in two years. Spain’s biggest oil company beat analyst estimates for first-quarter earnings, posting profit of 792 million euros as higher oil prices buoyed income from its drilling and production operations.

UniCredit SpA gained 6.8 percent to 2.84 euros. Italy’s biggest bank said first-quarter profit rose 13 percent to 914 million euros as higher trading income more than offset a drop in fees and lending.