Europe midday: Stocks slide as Greek debt repayment looms
Stocks in the euro-area were in the red as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned Greece against missing its looming debt repayment.
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde on Thursday that the IMF would not agree to let Greece delay a scheduled bailout payment. The next payment of €195m is due on 1 May and another for €744.9m is due 11 days later.
"We have never had an advanced economy asking for payment delays," Lagarde said.
In other Eurozone news, consumer prices fell 0.1% year-on-year in March, easing from a 0.3% drop a month earlier, Eurostat confirmed.
The rate of deflation was as expected and the improvement backs the European Central Bank’s (ECB) argument that its quantitative easing programme is having a positive effect on the economy.
ECB President Mario Draghi on Wednesday said QE would continue until September 2016 or until inflation moves back towards the target of just below 2%.
The euro was up 0.48% to $1.0813 after the CPI report.
In the UK, unemployment fell to 1.84m between December and February, the Office for National Statistics said, while the jobless rate declined from 5.7% to 5.6%.
The number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance in March fell by 20,700 to 772,400.
Employment hit a new record high of 31.04m, growing by 248,000 from the previous quarter and registering the biggest increase in a three-month since April 2014.
Weekly earnings rose 1.8% in the three-month period, better than the 1.7% gain expected.
Ben Brettell, senior economist at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “The Bank of England has previously said that it wants to see a marked increase in pay before judging that sufficient labour market slack has been eroded for interest rates to rise. If pay growth continues to improve, this removes a key barrier to higher interest rates.”
In its February Quarterly Inflation Report the Bank raised its wage growth forecast for 2015 to 3.5%, he noted, adding that a rate hike looks optimistic given the subdued outlook for inflation. Brettell predicts rates will remain at 0.5% well into 2016.
Stateside sees the release of CPI figures in afternoon trade with analysts predicting no growth in March.
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Narayana Kocherlakota on Tuesday raised concerns that low inflation could continue for years to come.
“I’m much more worried about the downside of having inflation stay persistently under the Fed’s 2% target,” Kocherlakota said.
Syngenta slides
Syngenta AG slumped after reporting first-quarter sales that missed estimates.
Accor SA rallied after it reported an increase in first-quarter sales that beat analysts’ estimates.
Ayngenta AG declined after first-quarter sales missed projections.
Abertis Infraestructuras SA dropped as an investor sold a 1.3% stake.
Nestle, the world’s biggest packaged food maker, said an increase in prices and volume boosted its first quarter sales. The group said sales rose 0.5% to $20.9bn (£14.6bn), adding that currency headwinds reduced reported sales by approximately 4.5%. The company's shares were broadly flat.
Brent crude fell 0.44% to $63.70 per barrel, and West Texas Intermediate dropped 0.74% to $56.29 per barrel, according to the ICE.