Friday 16th May 2008
Fairly quite day in terms of data today, only things due out today will be the US University of Michigan Confidence report out at 3:00 BST. A further decline is expected to around 61 from 82.6 in April. And the US Housing starts.
Barclays issued their update/trading statement with a write down of £1.7bln of assets, along with an increase of new mortgage lending. The market will be looking to see if they take the decision to conduct a rights issue to shore up their balance sheet or if they would look to private investors, Finance Director Chris Lucas quoted ‘We’re not going to rule in or rule out any options at this stage’.
Three weeks ago we saw the Bank of England announce a package of £50bln to help free up lending in the UK market, but reports are stating that this is looking to increase closer to £90bln!
Looking ahead we have a fairly busy week starting with the German ZEW Survey out on Tuesday, then a bit closer to home we have the all important Bank of England minutes published at 9:30 BST on Wednesday which will make for interesting reading.
Onto Thursday we have the UK Retail Sales followed closely by the CBI Industrial treads.
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