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CITYAM.COM
WEDNESDAY 8 JUNE 2016
NEWS
09
FTSE could score
if England wins
Euro 2016 cup
JAKE CORDELL
@JakeCordell
AS NATIONAL teams land in France
ahead of Euro 2016 – which kicks off
on Friday – City workers may be looking
forward to letting one eye drift
from the Bloomberg terminal
towards live blogs and TV coverage.
However, while summer is usually
seen as a quiet period for the stock
markets, CMC Markets have found
that a team’s fortunes at the tournament
could drive performance on the
markets and spark mini-rallies in the
aftermath of victory.
In the 12 months following the last
seven European championships, the
benchmark share index of the winning
country rose by an average of 8.7
per cent – compared with a 4.2 per
climb in the US-based S&P 500.
Host nations, by contrast, underperformed
the wider market, rising by
just two per cent in the year after the
tournament.
With so many eyeballs drawn to
screens, it appears there is also a correlation
between a company’s presence
at the tournament and their
share price performance.
Consumer brands and advertisers
associated with Euro 2012, the 2014
World Cup and the 2015 Women’s
World Cup – such as Anheuser Busch,
McDonald’s, Sony, Johnson and Johnson,
Coca-Cola and Visa – all experienced
an in-tournament spike.
CMC Markets even speculated that
equipment providers such as Adidas
and Nike suffered a slowdown during
the tournament as consumers came
to associate them with the failure of
the teams and players they sponsor.
“It’s possible that the disappointment
experienced by fans as their
favourite teams and players are eliminated
could be translating into shortterm
weakness for the stocks most
associated with them,” said Colin
Cieszynski, chief market strategist at
CMC.
Tesco bought Giraffe in 2013 for £48.6m in a bid to create “retail destinations”
Tesco plots sale of Giraffe chain
and Turkish subsidiary Kipa
JOSH MARTIN
@JoshMartinNZ
BRITAIN’s biggest supermarket chain
Tesco is set to sell its Kipa chain in
Turkey and Giraffe restaurants in the
UK.
The sale of Kipa, that Tesco
acquired in 2013, is likely to raise “a
couple of hundred million pounds”,
an analyst told Sky News, while an
unnamed family-owned investment
group is interested in snapping up
Giraffe.
The analyst added that the
restaurants business would be “all
but given away”.
Tesco bought Giraffe in 2013 for
£48.6m in a bid to create “retail
destinations” for customers.
Eurozone gets
boost as GDP
growth revised
JAKE CORDELL
@JakeCordell
THE EUROZONE grew a little faster
than expected in the first quarter,
the most recent back-and-forth
revisions to official GDP statistics
revealed yesterday.
Figures published by Eurostat
confirmed that the currency bloc’s
economy grew by 0.6 per cent
during the first three months of
the year, up from the most recent
estimation of a 0.5 per cent
expansion.
Analysts said the new numbers
confirmed the Eurozone “got off to
a strong start to the year”, with
household spending powering the
economy.
Stronger growth will be a boost
to the European Central Bank
(ECB), which has had to vociferously
defend its package of monetary
stimulus to critics.
One of the Bank’s latest tools –
the purchase of corporate bonds
as part of its €80bn (£62m) a
month quantitative easing
package – begins today in a move
central bank president Mario
Draghi hopes will provide yet
another boost to inflation
prospects.
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