LONDON (ShareCast) - European shares are still stuck in the red but have moved off session lows after the European Central Bank kept its key lending rate unchanged.
As expected, the ECB kept interest rates steady at 1%. Further information will
follow at the press conference this afternoon.
Elsewhere, the Bank of England has voted to pump an additional £25bn into the economy, taking its quantitative easing programme (QE) to £200bn.
It expects to spend the extra money in three months and will keep the scale of the programme under review. QE started at £75bn in March, rose to £125bn in May then to £175bn three months later.
The US Federal Reserve also kept interest rates at close to zero yesterday, with the Fed indicating that rates will remain low for some time as the economy is still weak.
Across the markets, the Dax (Xetra: news) is 11 points lower in Frankfurt at 5,433, while the Cac is 4 points down at 3,666. The Swiss market has dropped 44 points to 6,223.
Anglo-Dutch food and household goods giant Unilever (LSE: ULVR.L - news) saw third quarter pre-tax profits drop by 43%, but volume growth of 3.6% came in better than expected.
Pre-tax profits dropped to €1.42bn in the three month ended September compared with €2.50bn last year. Turnover was down 2% at €10.20bn.
Deutsche Telekom (Xetra: 555750 - news) reported a better-than-expected 7.2% rise in third quarter net profit to €959m and confirmed its 2009 targets.
Swiss bank UBS (Virt-X: UBSN.VX - news) has been fined £8m by the FSA for systems and controls failures that enabled four employees to carry out unauthorised transactions involving customer money on at least 39 accounts.
Angry workers at Opel factories across Germany have walked out after General Motors (NYSE: GM - news) said it will cut some 10,000 jobs as part of the planned restructuring of its European arm.
The US car giant said Wednesday night that jobs will have to go after its surprise decision to abandon the sale of Opel and Vauxhall. John Smith, GM's group vice president, said a new business plan would be put before European governments 'very shortly', but did not give any further details.
Send Article by Email
Send Article by IM
Blog This with Y! 360
Printable View
