Australia faces a quiet week ahead.
OneSteel will confirm this morning that it has paid $A932 million for steel processing assets of Anglo American.
Anglo revealed the sale in the early hours of today from South Africa.
The minutes of the Reserve Bank’s Melbourne Cup Day board meeting which surprised with a rate rise, will be the highlight this week.
And there’s also a speech from Deputy Reserve Bank Governor, Ric Battellino.
The minutes are out tomorrow and analysts will be trying to glean any indications about the strength of the RBA’s tightening bias from the release of the minutes from its last meeting.
Mr Battellino’s speech is in Perth on Thursday to a meeting of CEDA’s Western Australian division.
And Treasury head Ken Henry is due to speak in Tasmania on Friday, also to a CEDA function.
It is however a slow week for economic data releases in Australia, with the highlights being lending finance and October car registrations today, wage data (the Labour Price Index and Average Weekly Earnings) which is expected to show a slight uptick in wages growth, and skilled vacancies data all due mid-week.
BHP’s AGM is on this week.
It’s being held tomorrow in Perth. The London meeting was held last month.
The meeting will be the first time the company has faced shareholders since the ending of the iron ore joint venture with Rio Tinto and the apparently failed $US39 billion offer for Potash Corp in Canada.
For CEO Marius Kloppers it will be an especially important meeting as he will have to reassure shareholders he is still up to the job after those failures and the aborted tilt at Rio Tinto in 2007.
It will also be the first AGM for newish chairman Jack Nasser who took over from Don Argus earlier in the year.
We should also have further details this week and debate about the QR National float by the Queensland government.
Incitec Pivot will report full year earnings results later today.
And Elders reveals its 2010 results mid-week, with losses expected after several downgrades earlier in the year.
Both are expected to be uninspiring, but with the promise of an upturn with good conditions across much of rural Australia.
Annual meetings include Centro Retail and Centro Properties, OneSteel, Cabcharge Australia, Emeco, AV Jennings, Karoon Gas, Macquarie Radio Network, Brockman Resources, Ramsay Healthcare, Brambles, Sonic Healthcare and Western Australian Newspaper Holdings.
In the US, data for retail sales, inflation and housing starts will be released along with surveys of manufacturers in the New York and Philadelphia regions and a survey of home builders’ conditions.
(The Philadelphia region Fed survey of manufacturing is out on Thursday.)
Housing starts will be watched closely to see if the recent stabilisation is maintained and inflation data is likely to remain benign.
The retail sales figures are out tonight our time as well as the New York Empire State manufacturing index for November.
Tomorrow night sees the release of the US producer price index for October, along with industrial production and capacity utilisation figures (both for October).
America’s consumer price index figures are out Wednesday night, along with housing starts, both are for October.
General Motors will be pricing its Initial Public Offering on Wednesday with reports for heavy demand for stock.
The comeback motoring giant is looking to raise around $10 billion, which will go towards repaying the US government.
But Reuters says there are already bids for $US60 billion of shares (meaning the whole company could probably be re-floated now), with heavy demand for $US3 billion of preference shares also being sold.
Giant US retailers Wal-Mart, Lowes Co, Target, Sears and Home Depot are due to release their latest quarterly earnings starting on Tuesday night, our time.
Upmarket department store group Nordstrom also reports, along with other retailers like Gap and Abercrombie and Fitch.
Computer giant Dell is also due to release its quarterly figures, along with food group HJ Heinz.
So far this third quarter reporting season, 458 companies in the S&P 500 have reported results.
In the week ahead, 23 S&P 500 companies are scheduled to report, along with two Dow components.
In Europe, European Monetary Union (EU) trade balance data is due this week, along with EU consumer price index numbers for October; EU construction output data and the EU current account figures for September.
And Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is due to speak in Frankfurt on Friday night our time.
Markets will be looking at his comments for any clues on the Fed’s latest spending and the US economy.
In the UK, consumer price index figures for October are expected to be released, along with retail price index data for the month and retail sales figures.
Minutes from the Bank of England’s latest meeting and Germany’s ZEW economic-sentiment survey are also on the calendar.
Several European firms will report results next week, including British luxury fashion house Burberry and German chipmaker Infineon Technologies.
In Asia, the first estimate of Japan’s September quarter economic growth will be issued.
According to Bloomberg, market forecasts are for annual growth of 2.5% in the three months, up from 1.5% in the June quarter.
Those figures are out later this morning.
And mid-week the Bank of Korea will announce a key interest rate decision after a monetary p
