European Markets Quiet Ahead of ECB Meeting
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT.  THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Todd Benjamin is standing by at the London Stock Exchange this morning. Three little letters on everybody's mind, that's</s>ECB. TODD BENJAMIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, David, the European Central Banks is meeting today. Now they've only cut rates one time this year, that was back in May by a quarter point, and they are clearly on the slow track compared to the Fed which has cut rates seven times, the Bank of England which has cut rates four times. There's a lot of anticipation they could move this time by another quarter point, but it's not a sure deal. First of all, it's the euro launch for the ECB in terms of the publicity campaign in -- because beginning next year, actually you'll have the physical notes and coins beginning in January. And so some people think they may not want to muddle the two events. The other thing is also the Bundesbank president and council member Ernst Welteke came out yesterday and said that it's not the job of the European Central Bank to spur growth in the euro zone. And that dashed hopes of some who were expecting that they would cut rates to now be thinking that, hey, maybe they'll hold off. So it's really unclear what the ECB will do right now. It's really a divided camp among economists. In terms of the markets today, they are basically cautious ahead of that decision which we're going to get in a little over an hour's time, but there are some real standouts. One of them is telecom. Look at this, Vodafone is up 3 percent. Of course that also trades in the U.S. The reason is Merrill Lynch repeated its buy recommendation. They think the stock is undervalued at this level and could be worth about 245 pence so nearly double its current price about end of 2002. And Orange is up 6.5 percent on anticipation that this mobile phone operator could have better results. Its owner, France Telecom, is up 3.2 percent. You've got Deutsche Telekom up 1.5 percent and British Telecom is little changed. Tech under some pressure following that profit warning from Sun Microsystems. STMicroelectronics is off nearly 2 percent. Infineon, the chipmaker out of Frankfurt, is off 1 percent. ARM Holdings, a chip designer here in the U.K., is off 4 percent. Siemens, out of Germany, is off 1 percent and Alcatel, the telecom equipment maker, is off 2.5 percent. The tech markets all down, as you can see here. The one in Germany down the most, off nearly 2.5 percent, the one in Paris off nearly 1 percent. And the FTSE basically flat, the DAX is basically down just a third of a percent, the CAC is up -- rather down just slightly and the SMI is off very, very slightly. So very, very quiet ahead of the ECB meeting in terms of the markets in general. David, back to you in the studio.</s>HAFFENREFFER: All right, thank you very much, Todd. Todd Benjamin at the London Stock Exchange. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com