European shares fall early; Italian banks down

European shares fell early on Monday, with Italian banks extending falls from Friday on intensified worries that Italy could be dragged into the euro zone crisis.
At 0709 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was down 0.4% at 1,109.73 points, after falling 0.8% on Friday, when a report showed much lower U.S. jobs growth than expected.
Italian banks Intesa SanPaolo and UniCredit fell 2.7 and 1.5%, respectively.
Italian market regulator Consob on Sunday approved new disclosure requirements on short positions in an effort to curb stock volatility after a selloff hit domestic bank shares and government bonds on Friday.
"Investor sentiment is on the back foot this morning Nobody knows where this is going to stop and when the next domino will fall, but you can't stop investors from speculating despite the typical arm-waving on the part of the European officials on what they regard as the intrusive influence of hedge funds," said Jeremy Batstone-Carr, strategist at Charles Stanley, said.
"Italy is in a different order magnitude from Greece, Portugal and Ireland and takes the crisis to a whole new level."
European Council President Herman Van Rompuy called an emergency meeting of top officials dealing with the euro zone debt crisis for Monday morning, reflecting concern that the crisis could spread to Italy, the region's third largest economy.