Europe close: Stocks mixed as investors digest central bank announcements
European stocks finished Thursday just above the waterline, as Washington's impeachment drama and rate changes in Sweden failed to have much of an impact.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 was up 0.05% at 414.59, as the DAX in Germany slipped 0.08% at 13,211.96, and the CAC 40 in Paris rose 0.21% at 5,972.28.
In London, the FTSE 100 was 0.44% firmer at 7,573.82 after the Bank of England held interest rates steady.
Rate-setters at the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street kept all their main policy settings unchanged, with the Bank Rate steady at 0.75%, as expected, and all options remaining on the table.
"Monetary policy could respond in either direction to changes in the economic outlook in order to ensure a sustainable return of inflation to the 2% target," the Monetary Policy Committee said in a summary of its decision.
However, the MPC vote was somewhat more hawkish than expected, with some economists anticipating that six of the committee’s nine members would vote for a cut in interest rates, up from two the last time around.
"All told, we still think that interest rates are much more likely to rise next year than to fall," said Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
"But as both the identity of the next Governor and the willingness of the PM to sacrifice the economy to achieve Brexit by his timetable are unknown, the outlook for monetary policy remains exceptionally cloudy."
Earlier in the session, attention was across the Atlantic at the news that President Trump was now facing a trial in the Senate, after the Democrat-dominated House of Representatives voted to impeach him on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
“Financial markets have given the news a collective “meh”, and while US markets finished slightly lower, this news isn’t exactly a surprise to those who follow events in Washington DC,” said CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson.
"The reality is no-one cares given that its highly improbable that the Senate will ratify proceedings, which means the story will inevitably die a death, and while Democrats will be able to point to a political victory ahead of next year’s Presidential election, it’s unlikely to mean that much unless they can get behind a credible candidate to go up against the President.”
Meanwhile, Sweden's central bank hiked its benchmark repo rate by 0.25% to zero, ending five years of negative interest rates.
“The Riksbank raised rates because it had promised to,” said Bloomberg economist Johanna Jeansson.
“The bank has expected a slowdown in Sweden and abroad and it’s betting it will be a shallow one.
“And even if the outlook worsens, the hurdle to move on rates again will be very high. We forecast unchanged rates during at least another year.”
Among individual stocks, Swiss chemicals company Clariant was in the green by 2.11% after it agreed to the $1.56bn sale of its Masterbatches business to US polymer provider PolyOne.
Enagas climbed 2.41% after Zara founder Amancio Ortega snapped up a 5% stake in the Spanish energy company.
Hugo Boss reversed some of its earlier losses, but still finished down 0.72% after analysts at Deutsche Bank downgraded it from 'buy' to 'hold'.
The Swatch Group dropped 1.49% after a competition watchdog in Switzerland limited the amount of component shipments that the watchmaker can send to other companies.