Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.
The focus in Europe for the early part of this week will be retailers, with the market poised to receive operations updates from
- French retailer Carrefour;
- Dutch supermarket congomerate Ahold;
- German department store giant Karstadt Qualle and hypermarket group Metro; and
- a raft of retail oriented UK firms -
- supergrocers Sainsburys and William Morrison;
- retailer GUS;
- electronics retailer Dixons; and
- clothing chain Matalan.
Given last week's profit warning from Marks & Spencer, there will have been some mad revisions to estimates over the weekend. At last glance, the consensus guesses thought that Carrefour - who gives their update tonight - to guide to 4%+ sales growth; to my mind, if they get close to that they will be handsomely rewarded... but it's unlikely.
There are also traffic updates from Lufthansa and couple of second-tier European airlines - FinnAir and Swiss International Airlines. These guys will all have been badly hurt by rising oil prices.
Speaking of rising oil prices, BP also gives an operating update. As a key beneficiary of higher crude prices (as an explorere/extractor) and rising demand (as a refiner and distributor), it ought to be smiling both coming and going. Consensus expects BP's output to hit a record, which would mean something around 4 million barrels a day.
The ECB meets on Thursday, as does the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. No change to official interest rates is expected from either pack of central wankers.
