European stocks close:

European stocks fell, even as the Stoxx Europe 600 Index completed its second straight monthly rally, after companies including BP Plc and UBS AG posted earnings that missed forecasts and investors awaited the outcome of a two-day Federal Reserve meeting.

The German Finance Ministry said it sees no need to award a banking license to the euro-area’s permanent rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism.

National benchmark indexes retreated in 16 of the 18 western-European markets today. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 Index slid 0.8 percent, while Germany’s DAX Index added 0.2 percent. France’s CAC 40 Index fell 0.6 percent.

BP lost 4.4 percent to 425.05 pence, the most since Sept. 22. Europe’s second-biggest oil company reported a loss in the second quarter as the company wrote down the value of U.S. assets and production dropped.  BP reported a net loss of $1.4 billion compared with a profit of $5.7 billion a year earlier, the London-based company said today in a statement. Excluding one-time items and changes in inventories, profit missed analyst estimates.

UBS retreated 5.9 percent to 10.29 Swiss francs, the biggest decline since October. Switzerland’s biggest bank reported second-quarter profit that fell 58 percent, missing analysts’ projections, as its investment bank lost money on the Facebook Inc. share sale. Net income declined to 425 million francs ($434 million) from 1.02 billion francs a year earlier.