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Now, let's take a look at some of these stocks on the move today here in Europe. I'm Caroline Hepga and we joined by Bloomberg reporter Climbala. Good morning, Chloe, So let's wade through all of these earnings in Europe. What stands out to you this morning, Cloe.
Yeah, one of the big standouts for me this morning was Standard Chartered, after you know, a week of very very busy week of bank earnings, and so for Standard Chartered, we had record a first quarter profit way ahead of analyst estimates, and that was fueled primarily by really strong inflows in its wealth business, and so that helped to set higher charges that were linked to the tensions in
the Middle East. So it booked a credit impairment charge of almost three hundred million dollars, which included almost two hundred million in precautionary management overlays that were tied to the Middle Lease situation in particular. So that is one thing. But the wealth inflowers was so good that that really offset that and investors on our really looking towards next month when the bank is scheduled to unveil some new medium term at targets. As well, it's been very busy
with other banks as well. Today we had SoC GEN, we had BNP, we had BBVA as well, seeing really strong lending which offset the impact of provisions as well.
So now that we're coming to the end of this bank reporting season, it seems that the main takeaways are that there are a lot of charges and provisions related to the Middle East intentions, that trading is good, but maybe not as good as it was on Wall Street, and that there's still this continued uncertainty on the impact of inflation going forward on both loan demand and on provisions as well.
Yeah. Absolutely. So that then on the banks, what about Whitbread embarking all overhaul. What does that look like for them?
Yeah, very tough morning for Woodbridshares are down quite significantly, and that is after announcing a new five year plan. So it's cutting capital spending, it's cutting thousands of jobs as well, and the aim of all of that is to return two billion pounds to shareholders by twenty thirty one. So it plans to cut about thirty eight hundred jobs in the Yeken Island, so that's thirteen percent of its workforce.
That's quite significant. And it also plans to reduce the proportion of its properties that it owns outright, so essentially it will sell some freehold properties and then sign long term rental agreements instead, so there will free up some cash and that will be used to fund more shareholder returns, So that is the plan. It also plans to terms some of its branded restaurants into hotels as well, into
which means more hotel rooms and therefore better margins. But in versus are questioning a little bit this lease hold strategy instead of the freehold and also the fact that this is a lot of investment short term with maybe unclear benefits in the medium term. And then there's the added challenge of this higher inflation in this week, consumer confidence hurting travel demand and therefore tomant for hotel rooms.
Yeah, okay, so that's wirdbred Stillantis managed to turn a profit, but it hasn't turned its fortunes around as far as investors are concerned.
Why. Yeah, it was quite interesting because recently Stillantas said that I had seen a surge in shipments to North America and so and list had really seen this as a sign that this market was really back on track, especially given that North America is such an important market for Stillantis. But then today there was actually weaker than expected performance in that region and a lower than expected margin, and also a one term gain of around four hundred
million euros for expected future teriffory funds. So some of that took the shine off the return to profit. And excuse me. The CEO is now about to finanze a review of the operations and then will present the results in May so next month. And so we have already seen Silantis invest billions of dollars in the US and walking back its electrification plans and then also stashing some
prices to win back market share. So there's already some parts of this review that are known, but we'll see what else is in store and whether or not that is investorized enough to turn things around for Silantis.
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