(News Bulletin 247) – European stock markets fell sharply (-1.2% in London, -0.7% in Frankfurt, -0.9% in Paris) despite a business climate that improved slightly in France and Germany, according to indices from Insee and Ifo up slightly this month.

While noting that German companies are feeling relieved by the recent drop in energy prices, Commerzbank points out that ‘the slightly lower assessment of the current business situation is food for thought’.

“Companies are seeing that incoming orders have been falling since the spring,” recalls the German bank, which says it anticipates a scenario of an economic “trough” for Germany, but not that of a so-called “classic” recession.

Other data from the morning, the annual inflation rate in Germany stood at +8.7% in January, thus marking an acceleration, since the revision introducing the new reference year 2020 gave rise to a rate of + 8.1% for December 2022.

‘The core inflation rate also increased significantly from 5.2% to 5.6% in January, which is more than ever above the European Central Bank’s 2% target’, underlines do we also at Commerzbank.

In the news of values, Rio Tinto drops 3% in London after the publication of underlying results in sharp decline for 2022, and this although the mining company claims an operational performance in improvement.

In Frankfurt, operators are clearly abandoning Fresenius (-4%) after its annual publication, but are surrounding its dialysis subsidiary Fresenius MedCare (+11%) which the health services group intends to deconsolidate this year.

Among the other publications in Europe, they welcome those of the agri-food group Danone (+3%) and the car manufacturer Stellantis (+2%) in Paris, as well as that of the UCB laboratory (+3%), but sanction that of the insurer ageas (-3%) in Brussels.

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