Filtered by Region: Europe Use setting Europe
The latest polls for this month’s legislative elections in France raise the possibility that Macron’s party and allies may not win a majority. But even so, support from the centre-right might avoid a lame-duck presidency, allowing Macron to push through …
9th June 2022
Today’s policy statement and press conference sets the stage for the ECB to raise interest rates by 75bp by September and we expect that to be followed by two more hikes this year. The Bank’s failure to provide any more details about its backstop plans …
The latest London Crane Survey showed office space under construction rose marginally, but will increase further as supply rises. This supports our view that increased supply over the next two years will keep vacancy rates high. As a result, we expect …
The Turkish lira has continued to slide and the current backdrop is eerily similar to that which preceded previous currency crises. Sharp and disorderly falls in the lira over the coming weeks are now a real risk. The lira slipped beyond 17/$ this morning …
8th June 2022
We forecast the SNB to largely shadow ECB rate hikes over the next 18 months or so, albeit allowing the interest rate differential with the euro-zone to widen from 25bps at present to 50bps by end-2022. But the balance of risks is skewed towards the Bank …
7th June 2022
The S&P Global EM Manufacturing PMI for May suggests that the easing of virus-related disruptions in China supported a small rebound in EM manufacturing last month, but the sector remains very weak. And the effects of the war in Ukraine are taking an …
1st June 2022
The EU’s sixth round of sanctions on Russia marks yet another defining moment in the West’s detachment from Russia’s energy trade. The sanctions were widely telegraphed in advance, though, so for now we still forecast that crude oil prices will remain …
31st May 2022
Both our view and that of the IPF Consensus is that prime office rental growth will slow as hybrid working shifts take their toll. However, we also think it is likely that a quality gap will emerge, though the evidence of this is not conclusive so far. …
The ECB’s guidance that it can use PEPP reinvestments to contain bond spreads has a few big limitations. If the forthcoming interest rate hikes cause spreads to blow out, the ECB will either need to change the rules governing its reinvestments or, more …
26th May 2022
The extra financial support for households announced by the Chancellor today will help millions of households cope better with the cost of living crisis. But it won’t relieve all the pain and may mean the Bank of England has to pull the interest rate …
The risks of a recession in the euro-zone have risen. While we think a contraction will be narrowly avoided, this will remain a concern for property investors already facing the prospect of higher yields in the near term. Our recent European Economics …
With inflationary pressures remaining intense and policymakers keen to get the deposit rate out of negative territory, we now think the ECB is most likely to raise rates by 50bp in July and by 125bp in total this year. That said, we still think the …
The consensus among professional forecasters is that house price growth will slow but remain positive over the coming years, as a robust jobs market prevents forced sales. But even in the absence of financial distress, we think that a decline in prices is …
Despite the backdrop of inflation at 70% and the lira falling by falling by 10% against the dollar this month, Turkey’s central bank left interest rates on hold at 14.00% today. So long as President Erdogan is in power, rate hikes will remain off the …
Exports from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) face growing headwinds, and this feeds into our below consensus view on economic growth in the region. The larger economies in CEE such as Poland and Hungary are particularly exposed to slower growth in the …
25th May 2022
We held a Drop-In today to discuss our views on the ECB and what the chances are of a further hawkish surprise in the coming weeks. (You can see an on-demand recording here .) This Update answers several of the questions that we received, some of which we …
24th May 2022
We estimate that euro-zone households’ debt interest payments will quadruple as a share of income over the next couple of years as the ECB raises its policy rate. This will put yet further strain on households which are already struggling with higher …
The recent tightening of export restrictions has been limiting the supply of staple agricultural commodities available to global markets and pushing up prices. In light of the ban on wheat exports from India, we’ve raised our forecast for the price of …
23rd May 2022
In this Update , we answer a number of key questions on Russia’s public finances, including the likelihood of a sovereign default, the impact of higher energy prices and the collapse of the economy on the budget position, and how the government would be …
The Bank of Israel (BOI) hiked its policy by a larger-than-expected 40bp today, to 0.75%, and the backdrop of a strong economy, tight labour market and mounting inflation pressures means that we think it will deliver further hikes at its upcoming …
History suggests that the surge in energy prices over the past year means there is a good chance that the euro-zone will suffer a recession in 2022. It also suggests that it will be tricky for the ECB to tighten monetary policy without causing a recession …
20th May 2022
Record high rental growth at the start of the year is likely to mark a peak given signs that tenant demand is starting to ease. But strong wage growth and the rising cost of buying as mortgage rates rise mean rental growth is set to ease rather than …
19th May 2022
The account of the ECB’s April meeting shows that a lot of policymakers thought the criteria for rate hikes had already been met. Since then, the case for rate hikes has only strengthened. While not our central forecast, a 50bp hike in July is …
The recent collapse in consumer confidence to a near-record low has added to the probability that the UK experiences a recession this year. But households’ large stock of savings and the tightness in the labour market means that weak confidence may not …
Net capital outflows from EMs appear to have picked up over the past few weeks amid the general risk-off mood in global financial markets. This is a worrying development for countries with fragile external positions, notably Turkey and some smaller …
18th May 2022
We estimate that a rise in Bank Rate from 0.10% last November to a peak of 3.00% would mean that GDP is around 2.0% lower than if Bank Rate had stayed at 0.10%. That is a smaller drag than the Bank of England has incorporated into its forecasts. We do not …
17th May 2022
The ECB’s rate hikes in 2011 were a mistake, not just because they exacerbated the widening in peripheral bond spreads. Underlying inflation was subdued and policymakers were too concerned with acting pre-emptively to contain inflation expectations. They …
16th May 2022
The UK government’s plan to use domestic legislation to overwrite parts of the Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol risks creating another headwind for the economy and exacerbating price pressures at a time when CPI inflation is on the cusp of rising to a …
While our central forecast remains that euro-zone “peripheral” spreads will rise only a bit between now and the end of 2022, we think that the risk of a significant increase in spreads has risen . Notwithstanding a tick-up today, the yield spreads of …
13th May 2022
One of the unforeseen consequences of the homeworking revolution is its negative impact on city centre retail footfall. The evidence suggests that in urban centres there is a link between higher levels of remote work and poorer retail performance, which …
We think that currencies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) will depreciate further against the euro over the rest of this year. Within the region, we anticipate that the koruna will continue to outperform and the forint will remain a regional laggard – …
12th May 2022
The current bout of high inflation is influencing wage negotiations in the euro-zone and stronger pay growth this year seems all but guaranteed, reinforcing the ECB’s resolve to normalise policy. But as things stand, a wage-price spiral still looks …
11th May 2022
News of force majeure on one of the pipelines in Ukraine bringing Russian natural gas to Europe just adds to our conviction that Europe is going to struggle to meet its gas needs over the next year. The heightened competition for gas imports suggests that …
Russia has suspended the publication of monthly trade data, but figures from its trading partners show that import values plunged 45% m/m in March while exports rose slightly amid high commodity prices. This is likely to remain the case, pushing Russia’s …
Italian prime property values continued to make solid gains in Q1. However, with the economic outlook downgraded and larger increases in property yields expected over the next couple of years, capital value growth is set to slow sharply and by more than …
Policymakers at the ECB are becoming more concerned about inflation expectations, with professional forecasters, financial investors, consumers and firms all anticipating that the pace of price increases will continue to accelerate. This makes it more …
10th May 2022
Industrial production in Central Europe performed much better than expected in March given the sharp fall in German production. We still think industry will weaken in Q2 as supply chain disruptions bite, but we’re hopeful that the major economies in …
We think the euro will eventually weaken further, falling to parity against the US dollar, as the euro-zone economy falters, the terms of trade shock from higher energy prices feeds through, and the global economic outlook continues to worsen. While the …
6th May 2022
While a stronger dollar is generally regarded as a headwind for EMs, we think it will only be a minor one for most major EMs, particularly compared with the headwinds from weakness in China, spillovers from the war in Ukraine, and domestic monetary …
Central banks in Czechia and Poland caught investors by surprise today as the Czech central bank (CNB) unexpectedly re-accelerated the pace of its tightening cycle with a 75bp hike while Poland’s central bank (NBP) slowed the pace of tightening with a …
5th May 2022
With economic concerns worsening in the euro-zone, we expect that the Danish economy will not be immune. And we think that the shifts in the interest rate outlook in particular will have the most significant impact on Copenhagen office performance. Our …
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) struck a more dovish tone today while raising interest rates from 0.75% to a 13-year high of 1.00% and saying that it won’t make a decision until after August on whether to shrink its balance sheet quicker by selling …
Poland’s government has shown no signs of meeting President Putin’s demand to get gas flows restored, but we think the economy is relatively well placed to deal with a loss of Russian supplies. As things stand, we do not expect any energy rationing and we …
We think that the surprising stability of the Turkish lira so far this year will not last much longer and we forecast it to weaken against the dollar over the coming months, from ~14.8/$ now to 18/$ by end-2022. This would be a fall of around 20% and, …
As was widely expected, the Norges Bank left interest rates on hold at +0.75% today and all but confirmed that “the policy rate will […] be raised in June”. After June, we forecast two more rate hikes in 2022 and one per quarter next year, which would …
The EU proposal to end imports of Russian crude oil and petroleum products by the end of the year has long been in the works. If approved, we expect Russia’s oil exports to fall by around 20% this year, which in turn would keep oil prices over $100 per …
4th May 2022
The prospect of tighter monetary policy in the euro-zone has raised the threat of a bigger sell-off in the region’s bond markets. If this happens, we think the ECB would ultimately intervene to prevent any lasting damage. But we doubt that it will agree …
While the low level of prime industrial yields compared to history leaves the sector vulnerable to rising interest rates, a fair value analysis that incorporates our expectations for rental growth suggests that office yields could come under more upward …
Uncharacteristically, euro-zone GDP rose while US GDP fell in Q1. But the weak outturn in the US partly reflected temporary factors and domestic spending remained much stronger than in the euro-zone. We expect normal service to be resumed in the rest of …
3rd May 2022
The timeliest surveys show that supply problems faced by euro-zone companies have eased a little this year, but remain intense. This will continue to weigh on production and keep inflation high. Since the start of the year there have been signs that the …
