German shares unchanged at the start of trading on Friday

BERLIN, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- German stocks were virtually unchanged at the start of trading on Friday, with the benchmark DAX index growing by just 2.74 points, or 0.02 percent, opening at 13,210.86 points.

The biggest winner among Germany's largest 30 companies at the start of trading was plastics specialist Covestro, increasing by 5.54 percent, followed by chipmaker Infineon with 0.91 percent and pharmaceutical company Merck with 0.28 percent.

On Friday, Covestro rejected media reports about a possible takeover by U.S. alternative asset manager Apollo Global Management, noting that only strategic talks had been held.

Shares of Continental fell by 1.32 percent. The German automotive supplier was the biggest loser at the start of trading on Friday.

Producer prices of industrial products in Germany in August remained at the previous month's level but declined by 1.2 percent compared to last year, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced on Friday.

While energy prices decreased by 3.9 percent, with prices of natural gas and petroleum falling by 9.9 and 14.4 percent respectively, prices of raw materials saw an even more profound decline, shrinking by almost 17 percent, according to Destatis.

The yield on German ten-year bonds went up 0.001 percentage points to minus 0.489 percent, and the euro was trading almost unchanged at 1.1846 U.S. dollars, increasing by 0.01 percent on Friday morning.