The control room of Euronext, the company that manages the Paris Stock Exchange (AFP/Archives/ERIC PIERMONT)
The Paris Stock Exchange ended the week up 0.81% on Friday, after well-received inflation figures, which added to the ambient optimism of investors, ending a quarter up sharply.
The star CAC 40 index ended at 7,322.39 points, returning above its level of March 9, before the banking shock which had pushed the index below 6,900 points.
The banking crisis born of the bankruptcy of the American institution Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) now seems very far in the minds of investors. Even the month of March came out positive (+0.75%).
Since the beginning of the week, it has posted an increase of 3.59%, its best weekly performance since the beginning of January.
And over the last three months, the Parisian rating has climbed 13.11%, its best quarter since the end of 2020.
The annual inflation rate in the euro zone fell in March for the fifth consecutive month, to 6.9% year on year, after 8.5% in February, thanks to the lull in energy prices, according to Eurostat. Analysts had expected 7.1%.
Adjusted for volatile energy and food prices, so-called “core” inflation rose again to 5.7% in February.
In France, inflation is also slowing: +5.6% over one year in March according to INSEE, against 6.3% in February.
“Throughout Europe, headline inflation is falling, which was expected simply because energy prices fell compared to last year,” comments Charlotte de Montpellier, economist at ING France.
However, she notes that “underlying inflation is not decreasing, this means that the European Central Bank (ECB) has not finished raising its rates, but we also expected it”.
The impacts of high interest rates and inflation are increasingly felt: “consumption is down in France, in Germany too, which shows that consumption is impacted by inflation and that we are in a phase slowdown in the economy in general”, adds Ms. de Montpellier.
Big acquisition for Sartorius Stedim
The biotech Sartorius Stedim announced Friday just before the opening of the Stock Exchange the purchase for nearly 2.4 billion euros of the French supplier of technology for cell and gene therapies Polyplus. The action of the group, which achieved a turnover of around 3.5 billion euros in 2022, fell by 8.62% to 282 euros.
© 2023 AFP
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