European shares down on commodities weakness; Vodafone merger talks offer support

MILAN (Reuters) - European shares slipped in early deals on Monday, led by weakness in commodities-related stocks, though deal talks elsewhere offered some support with Vodafone up nearly 3 percent.

The STOXX 600 fell 0.6 percent, adding to a slight drop seen on Friday. In spite of the losses the pan-European index remains up nearly 1 percent so far in January, on course for its third month of gains in a row.

Vodafone confirmed it was in talks to merge it India unit with Idea while British engineering firm Atkins WS jumped more than 6 percent on a report of a $4 billion merger approach.

Europe's mining and oil and gas indexes were the biggest laggards, however, both down around 0.9 percent, as crude prices fell and copper eased below eight-week peaks.

Among top losers were oil products storage company Vopak and refiner Neste. Goldman Sachs downgraded both stocks to sell.

(Reporting by Danilo Masoni, Editing by Vikram Subhedar)