Nigel Bolton, head of European Consulting at fund manager Blackrock, told the Morningstar London Investment Conference 2012 today that European stocks were looking cheap relative to world counterparts.

While some parts of Europe were in crisis, there were still many opportunities among good corporates with worldwide exposure, he said.

Greeece was facing major problems and should probably not have joined the Euro in the first place, he said. He said Greece was unlikely to survive the Euro crisis with its Euro intact as too many Greeks were opposed to austerity.

However, Greece's problems are not replicated everywhere and he believes Italy is a long way down the road to sorting out its problems compared to countries such as Spain and Greece.

He believes the financial problems in Spain are serious but the government is taking steps to sort out the problems with bank capitalisation. At the moment he says Spanish banks are "pretty much uninvestible." He sees some value in Spain but needs clarification from his analysts, he says.

His talk to delegates at the conference was titled: European Equities: Buying Companies, Not Economies.

To illustrate his point he explained how companies could still do well despite the state of the local market. A good example was Ireland. Over the last 12 months the Irish market is up nearly 6 per cent and Ireland was the third best performing market in the world in the past 12 months behind only the Phillipines and Nasdaq. Companies such as Paddy Power, Ryanair and others had done well. An 8 per cent dividend this year from Ryanair underlined the value.

European politics still a problem but "real value" in some European countries was evident, he said. "Some really good companies on really good valuations. As Warren Buffett said: 'be greedy when others are being fearful."