Europe equity markets to outperform

By Chris Rice, head of European equities at HSBC Asset Management The US economy remains the key driver of global growth and the effect of massive monetary and fiscal loosening should enable the US economy to come out of recession somewhere around the second quarter of 2002. Any recovery in Euroland will probably be less pronounced than that in the US, as interest rate cuts have been less aggressive and the room for fiscal expansion is less as a result of the Maastricht deficit criteria. However, with the exception of Germany, there is unlikely to be a technical recession in Europe...