Europe midday: Stocks little changed ahead of Fed chair speech

Stocks are holding near the unchanged mark come midday, ahead of a key speech from new US Fed chair Jerome Powell scheduled for later in the day.

Dampening sentiment a tad, the latest reading on Spanish consumer prices printed well ahead of forecasts, rising by 1.2% on the year in February, versus the 0.9% rise that economists had penciled in.

Offsetting that, regional data out of Germany pointed to a dip in headline inflation in the euro area's largest economy, to 1.3% year-on-year, as expected, down from a January reading of 1.4%.

In remarks to the European parliament the day before, European Central Bank president Mario Draghi said "[on inflation] we're generally more confident that it is proceeding towards our target, [we] have to be persistent and patient because the underlying inflation has yet to show more convincing signs of a sustained upward adjustment".

As of 1248 GMT, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was edging lower by 0.35% or 1.35 points at 381.71, alongside a dip of 0.39% or 47.64 points for Germany's Dax to 12,479.78.

Periphery stocks were faring slightly better, with the FTSE Mibtel adding 0.07% or 15.46 points to trade at 22,720.79 and the Cac-40 ahead by 0.12% or 6.61 points to 5,350.87.

To take note of as well, overnight German Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU party came out solidly in favour of a coalition deal with the SPD.

Nonetheless, and as Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank pointed out: "This was never really in doubt, the key test remains this weekend when the SPD membership votes on the deal, where support for the deal is much more divisive, while the Italian election on the same day, 4th March also has the potential to introduce fresh uncertainty into European politics."

Looming large on the economic calendar for Tuesday, Powell was due to deliver his semi-annual Monetary Policy report to Congress at 1500 GMT, with traders eager to see if the White House's recently approved infrastructure spending package might lead to a slightly more hawkish Fed chair.

Back in the corporate space, America's largest cable operator Comcast's £22.1bn hostile bid for UK rival Sky had pushed the Stoxx 600 Media sector gauge higher by 1.69% to 275.74.

Media wasn't the only space in the European equity universe seeing M&A-related news flow, with E.On said to be interested in German rival RWE's stake in Innogy, Boersen Zeitung reported.

A consortium including Australia's Macquarie was another possible suitor mentioned.

German chemicals giant BASF was also in focus after telling markets it was targeting a rise in operating profits for this year of as much as 10%.

Going the other way, following an analysis into Akorn's data integrity, Fresenius might pull out from a bid.

Shares in France's Safran were lower even after the company announced better-than-expected profits and sales for 2017.