[David Haffenreffer, Cnn Anchor:] The European markets, at this point, enjoying a nice bounce after that big bounce on Wall Street yesterday.
[Christine Romans, Cnn Anchor:] And Adrienne Roberts, of the "Financial Times," joins us from the "FT"'s London newsroom. Tell us, looks like U.S. spillover, there is other optimism in European markets. What's going on today?
[Adrienne Roberts, "financial Times":] There definitely is some spillover, I think. After four days of worrying about interest rates and the record low for the euro yesterday, the sun has come out again, everybody is feeling exuberant. I think the non-farm payrolls data and the PMI data today has created some quite optimistic feelings. I think most of the European markets also are expecting those numbers to come out softish. The rallies, basically, are being led across Europe by the tech and the telecom stocks. We have some tremendously strong performances coming through, Colt Telecom in London is trading more than nine percent higher, France Telecom is roughly six percent higher. We've got results today from Telefonica in Spain, not wonderful results, the net profit figures are actually slightly down on the same period last year, but the results are in the upper end of the expected range and also there is some understanding on the part of the market that Telefonica's South American expansion in the last year also has hit the bottom-line quite hard. But also Vodafone upgraded by Merrill Lynch recently, the outlook there that they are trading at about five percent higher. So it is right across the board, very strong performances.
[Haffenreffer:] The euro looks relatively steady at this point, the pound a bit higher in today's trading?
[Roberts:] That's right. Well, long at last the euro is, last time I looked, roughly above the 88.8 cent level. Of course, it hit a low of 88.4 yesterday afternoon. We don't know whether it is out of the woods yet. Of course, the next big potential stumbling block for the euro is late September, when Denmark votes on whether or not to join the European Union. Some economists are suggesting that if that is a no vote, the euro might be in for another high jump. Sterling also, of course, the problem with sterling is that it may be weak against the dollar, but it is still pretty strong against the euro and that's where a lot of the damage is being done to Britain's manufacturers. So, still, that's a fairly unsatisfactory situation for the
[U.k. Haffenreffer:] All right, Adrienne Roberts, at the "Financial Times," thanks for the update.