Europe open: Shares tread water ahead of Lagarde news conference

European shares tread water in early trade on Thursday after a rally in US tech stocks overnight and ahead of a European Central Bank decision later in the day.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index was flat at 369.9 in early trade. Traders were more interested in comments from ECB President Christine Lagarde, who was expected to talk about the strong euro as the Eurozone economic recovery loses momentum.

Investors were also watching the outcome of an emergency meeting between the UK and EU over Britain’s plan to break the law and change the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

"By the looks of things, investors aren’t expecting too much support from Christine Lagarde and her peers. The CAC slipped 0.4%, with the DAX down 0.1%, yesterday’s rebound already losing steam," said Spreadex analyst Connor Campbell.

"Still, the size of those moves suggests that the markets are happy to hold off on anything big until they see whether the ECB has got a change in direction planned."

In corporate news, shares in supermarket chain Morrison led the losers boards after the company reported a 25% slump in first-half adjusted pretax profits as higher Covid-19 costs dented the bottom line.

Games Workshop shares soared almost 20% as the company declared a 50p a share dividend and said trading in the three months to 30 August was ahead of expectations thanks to a solid performance from the online segment.

Akzo Nobel shares rose as the chemicals outfit said revenue for the third quarter would be near last year’s levels.

BP shares were lower after the company agreed to buy a 50% stake in two US offshore wind power development projects from Norwegian energy firm Equinor for $1.1bn. Equinor shares rose on the news.