Nordic & Swiss Economics Update Swiss National Bank still pulling out all the stops The SNB’s pledge to go on purchasing large quantities of corporate bonds while providing generous liquidity to the banking sector and intervening ‘decisively’ in currency markets has left it among the... 18th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Update Norwegian interest rates may have troughed Norway’s relatively mild downturn should ensure that the latest 25bp interest rate reduction by the Norges Bank is probably the last in the current cycle. But we still think that the Bank will not... 17th June 2009 · 1 min read
Nordic & Swiss Economics Update Norwegian interest rates may have troughed Norway’s relatively mild downturn should ensure that the latest 25bp interest rate reduction by the Norges Bank is probably the last in the current cycle. But we still think that the Bank will not... 17th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Commercial Property Update Poor labour market data emphasise weak outlook for rental values The rate of decline in euro-zone employment accelerated sharply in the first three months of 2009 and, although survey measures of employment intentions have picked up a little, further significant... 16th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Update Will the Spanish bank rescue package be enough? The announcement by the Spanish Government that it plans to set up a fund to provide capital to the ailing banking sector is certainly good news. But on its own, it will not be enough to prevent the... 16th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Update Euro-zone bank losses: halfway through? In its latest Financial Stability Review, published yesterday afternoon, the ECB has taken a less gloomy view on the potential losses that euro-zone banks still have to face relative to a previous IMF... 16th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Commercial Property Update Do office and retail property share a common fair-value benchmark? One simple assumption that we have employed to date in our analysis of European commercial property markets is that, in any given market, the fair-value property/bond yield spread for office and... 11th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Update The Baltics remain a weight on Sweden's shoulders Today’s announcement that the Swedish Riksbank is to borrow €3bn from the ECB confirms that, while the green shoots of recovery may be starting to emerge in parts of the global economy, the Baltic... 10th June 2009 · 1 min read
Nordic & Swiss Economics Update The Baltics remain a weight on Sweden’s shoulders Today’s announcement that the Swedish Riksbank is to borrow €3bn from the ECB confirms that, while the green shoots of recovery may be starting to emerge in parts of the global economy, the Baltic... 10th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Update Risk appetite to fade as recovery disappoints Today we have revised our key economic forecasts. At the same time, we have updated our projections for currency, bond, equity and commodity markets. The new market numbers are presented in the table... 8th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Update Euro-zone prospects improve by less than elsewhere The recent upward revision to our forecasts for the US and UK economies has prompted only a modest increase in our euro-zone forecast given less convincing signs of a recovery so far and a... 8th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Commercial Property Update Euro-zone prime office yield convergence: a temporary phase? Since mid-2007, the yield gap for prime office property in five of the euro-zone’s larger office markets has narrowed sharply. To us, this convergence suggests that, to date, investors have not placed... 5th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Update ECB does the bare minimum By leaving interest rates on hold and simply revealing the details of previously announced modest covered bond purchases, the ECB did the least that might have been expected today. Accordingly, the... 4th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Update Trade finance - still costly and hard to get The collapse in euro-zone exports in Q1 – and indeed in Q4 last year – was greater than would be expected from the decline in global demand. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the drying up of trade... 4th June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Update Growing troubles in the Baltics add to Sweden's problems Concerns about the health of the Swedish banking system have increased further in response to a growing threat of an exchange rate devaluation in the Baltics. While the impact of such a devaluation on... 3rd June 2009 · 1 min read
Europe Chart Pack Inventory correction has further to run The breakdown of Q1’s euro-zone GDP figures brought little comfort. The record 2.5% quarterly drop was driven mainly by falls in investment and inventories, while a sharp drop in exports was largely... 3rd June 2009 · 1 min read
