Scandinavian companies topped the gainers this week emerging as the clearest winners of surging oil and commodities prices, which gave a lift to European stock markets and outweighed a steady trickle of bad news from the banking sector.

Danish shipping group AP Moller-Maersk, which has an oil and gas division, surged 17.7 per cent to DKr586 after its first-quarter results showed that profit nearly tripled.