Europe open: Stocks slip as investors digest German data, Draghi speech

European stocks were flat to a little lower as investors digested weaker-than-expected German data, while talk of additional stimulus measures from the European Central Bank failed to provide a boost.

At 0900 GMT, the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index was flat, France’s CAC 40 was down 0.4% and Germany’s DAX was 0.1% lower.

ECB chief Mario Draghi said in a speech in Frankfurt that the central bank was ready to act to boost inflation and that it would review its policy at the December meeting.

"If we decide that the current trajectory of our policy is not sufficient to achieve our objective, we will do what we must to raise inflation as quickly as possible," Draghi said.

"We consider the asset purchase programme to be a powerful and flexible instrument, as it can be adjusted in terms of size, composition or duration to achieve a more expansionary stance."

The euro fell following Draghi’s comments. It was down 0.5% against the greenback, 0.3% against the pound and 0.6% versus the yen.

As for Thursday’s meeting minutes, Oanda analyst Craig Erlam said: “The markets appear to have heavily priced in further easing but the composition of it is still unclear.

It looks increasingly likely that we’ll see a cut to the deposit rate from its current ‘zero lower bound’, as well as an upgrade on the asset purchase programme that was launched almost a year ago. How aggressive the ECB will be on this though is still not clear.”

Data released by Destatis showed German producer prices fell 2.3% in October from last year, marking the biggest drop since February 2010 and weaker than the 2% decline economists had been expecting.

On the corporate front, Imperial Tobacco rallied in London amid reports that British American Tobacco has put together a syndicate of banks to finance a possible purchase of its rival.

Elsewhere, Switzerland’s OC Oerlikon surged after after Sweden's Atlas Copco said it would buy its vacuum business for an enterprise value of €486m.

Beleaguered German car maker Volkswagen slipped in early trade. The company is expected to make a statement later on Friday following a planned supervisory board meeting.

The macroeconomic calendar is pretty light, with Eurozone consumer confidence the highlight at 1500 GMT.