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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (3997)	6/2/1998 10:37:00 AM
From: Thomas Haegin	Respond to of 9980

Mike, << have you been getting the general feeling the author states, about Europe getting "weak?" >> Frankly no, not at all. I cannot speak for the UK though. But economies in Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Italy are still strong and getting stronger. People from the UK and Germany and Scandinavia still buy vacation houses and appartments at a furious pace in Spain. I know this because my mother lives in Mallorca, the Florida of Europe so to say, and sees it first hand. I've been there just 10 days ago: the construction sector is very strong, real estate sales are running very high. The money for these houses (mainly vacation homes) must come from somewhere... Europeans by and large feel rather good these days, not the least because of strong stock markets. Also, the employment picture in Germany got from real bad to a little less bad the last couple of months; the UK has been leading the European employment pace for years already. The economy is also improving here in Switzerland, I do see this also. I still firmly believe that a US slowdown will hurt Europe more than the present Asian slowdown, but the main driver for Europe is pan-european trade, and that's strong and getting rather stronger as trade barriers fall (e.g. Euro coming). I would also say that Europe has more exposure to Eastern Europe than to Asia (for example via the EBRD). I think that European cos by and large have less export exposure and dependency on Asia than US companies. The main export goods for Europe is telephone equipment (Ericsson, Alcatel) and machinery (Mannesmann, MAN), turbines (ABB, Siemens), and cars, but not computer technology. Again, I quite disagree with the chap (Fleckenstein). If you compare present economic Europe to 3 years ago, it's a great positive difference, IMO. Thomas