Checking in on the FTSE 100, it feels like a very sleepy day on the London Stock Exchange: the main index has sagged by 0.22%.

British Airways owner IAG is the biggest faller, down by 7.4%, after announcing £2.5bn in fundraising plans. BT shares have lost 4.4%.

Germany’s Dax has gained 1% while France’s Cac 40 has lost risen by 2%.

Another big loss for an oil supermajor, ExxonMobil, if not quite on the scale of Shell’s $18bn stonker from yesterday.

Exxon on Friday said it had lost $1.1bn (£840m) in the second quarter, compared to $3.1bn in 2019.

It cut $2bn of previously planned spending as it adjusted to lower oil prices and slumping demand as economies around the world locked down.

However, the headlien Exxon figures were helped by a non-cash gain from inventory valuation adjustment, due to rising commodity prices over the quarter, of $1.9bn.

For the UK, one of the big news stories of the past 24 hours is last night’s reimposition of some lockdown measures on parts of northern England, including Manchester.

Boris Johnson is due to make new lockdown announcements. You can follow here:

An interesting bit of news from the UK’s banking conduct regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, which has said that banks might have to offer “sustainable forebearance” for customers struggling because of the pandemic.

Forebearance means customers being allowed longer to pay off their loans without interest charges mounting up.

Regulators stepped in to make sure banks gave customers leeway at the start of the crisis, but it appears to be looking at longer-term options. That could eventually affect banks’ profits if they are unable to charge things like overdraft fees.

On Friday the FCA asked banks about their possible new approach,

Via Reuters:

Britain’s banks may need to consider introducing “sustainable forbearance” for customers who continue to face difficulties with loan repayments after Covid-19 relief measures end in the autumn, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said on Friday.

The watchdog launched a “call for input” to determine what further measures may be needed when repayment holidays introduced after the pandemic lockdown for home loans and credit cards come to an end on Oct. 31.

Banks have provided more than 1.8 million mortgage payment deferrals and in excess of 1.6 million personal loan and credit card payment holidays, the FCA said.

Though the FCA expects most borrowers to be able to resume payments, it said that a significant minority will need further support after many also borrowed from family and friends to keep up payments on other loans.

“We consider that the appropriate time for firms to move beyond blanket deferrals is at the end of the customer’s second deferral,” the FCA said.

Could the eurozone and US data have a bearing on the UK economy?

Andrew Sentance, a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee and a senior adviser to Cambridge Econometrics, wonders if the Treasury’s independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility, may have been too pessimistic in its forecasts.

The fall in eurozone GDP is so big that it is difficult to put it into historical context.

Bert Colijn, senior economist for the eurozone at ING investment bank, said:

Some records are never to be beaten. Think of Alan Shearer’s Premier League goals, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point basketball game, Eddy Merckx’s victories in cycling. The second quarter eurozone GDP figure should probably go on that list as well; it would be great if it were never to be beaten.

The -12.1% quarter-on-quarter growth rate is the worst ever recorded and a pretty difficult one to interpret. It is a shocking drop, but completely understandable as the economy was shut for a considerable period during the quarter. It, therefore, doesn’t tell us all that much about the general state of the economy, which is usually why one would look at GDP figures in the first place. Still, the deeper the lockdown, the higher the chance of more significant lasting damage to the economy and therefore the extent of the decline is still relevant.

Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics, a consultancy, said:

There are few silver linings in the data published today, which confirm that euro-zone GDP slumped just as much as feared in the second quarter and that inflation remained well below target. While parts of the economy have sprung back to life over the past couple of months, the damage already done combined with the current and potential future impact of the virus mean that the recovery will be painfully slow.

Given the rebound since April, our best guess is that economic activity is now some 5-10% below its pre-virus level in the euro-zone as a whole – it is hard to be more precise than that. Moreover, high frequency data suggest that the recovery in household consumption is petering out, while business investment is sure to remain extremely subdued in the circumstances. Even without a resurgence of the pandemic, which may now be underway in parts of the currency union, the outlook is very poor.

The current recession in the European economy far outweighs the scale of the global financial crisis in 2008, when the contraction did not break the -6% mark.

Spain, which has suffered one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks worldwide, also saw the deepest contraction in the second quarter among eurozone nations.

There are some more notes of caution on the house price rise from economists.

It is easy to see why some expect prices to drop again, given the unemployment surge expected by many. Here is a measure of house price affordability for UK workers: the drop during the financial crisis is evident, but so far there is little sign of a much deeper recession.

The UK housing market is a strange beast, with the added complication of foreign speculative flows - although this crisis might conceivably affect buyers from abroad.

Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said:

Falling employment also will weigh on prices; the number of people on employers’ payrolls was 2.2% lower in June than in March, and job losses will accumulate further as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme is wound down between August and October.

Meanwhile, the supply of homes coming on to the market likely will increase in the winter, once mortgage payment holidays of up to six months for struggling households come to an end, pushing some into forced sales.

Accordingly, we continue to expect a peak-to-trough decline in house prices of about 3%, though the stamp duty changes have made it likely that the near-term pace of decline will be gradual and that the low-point probably will not be seen until the summer of next year.

The FTSE 100 is trundling along, as might be expected in late July (even if we do have a fair few dramatic company results to contend with).

But while a 0.5% gain makes for a relatively relaxed Friday, it has not been a good month for investors in Britain’s biggest public companies, which are on course for a monthly decline.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said:

The FTSE 100 did its best to fight back on Friday, climbing 0.5% to 6,022, yet that still puts the index down 2.4% on the month and 7.1% below the 5 June high following the market crash earlier this year.

Tobacco, banks and media have been the worst performing FTSE 350 sectors in July.

Here are the full stories for two of the big issues this morning: NatWest’s massive loan impairment and British Airways owner IAG’s even bigger fundraising effort.

Another eurozone GDP reading: Italy was already in recession, but now it is officially the worst since at least the second world war.

Italian output contracted by 12.4% in the second quarter compared to the previous three months, but again, as with the French data, it was better than the 15% fall expected.

But the quarterly slump in the eurozone’s third-largest economy was still “unprecedented”, national statistics bureau ISTAT said.

Some interesting snippets coming through from BT, which has also been updating investors on its progress. Revenues and earnings were both down 7% for April to June.

Via Reuters:

Chief Executive Philip Jansen said BT delivered a strong operating performance in the quarter, when millions relied on its networks for home working and schooling, and produced “relatively resilient” financial results.

He said the company, which pulled its dividend in May to help weather the unfolding health crisis, had enough visibility to provide guidance for the year.

“Despite our strong operational performance in the first three months of the year, it is clear that Covid-19 will continue to impact our business as the full economic consequences unfold,” he said.

And more details from Jansen’s call with media:

• There are no new job cut plans because of the pandemic.
• Daytime data usage levels are up by 20% - almost certainly a sign of the work-from-home boom.
• The UK’s plan on removing Huawei technology (which the government says is an espionage risk)from network infrastructure is “sensible” and BT can execute it.
  

Another thing to add to the eurozone GDP pot that we missed from earlier: we have already had French growth (or should that be contraction?) figures this morning - but there is a silver lining.

The contraction of 13.8% in the French economy in the second quarter was a post-war record, but it was less than economists had feared - a straw at which we will clutch while we can.

Consumer spending rose to pre-pandemic levels to ease some of the pain for the quarter.

Losses at digital bank Monzo ballooned to £114m, as the bank warned that the financial strain of the Covid-19 crisis had put the company’s future at risk.

The London-based bank said its revenues had been “significantly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic” and its economic impact. Along with stricter regulations meant to combat financial crime, it could result in lower customer numbers, higher costs and lower revenue.

Monzo’s annual report said:

This increases the risk that the group will not be able to execute its business plan, which could adversely impact its ability to generate a profit or raise sufficient capital to meet future regulatory capital requirements.

Due to these obstacles, the directors recognise there are material uncertainties that cast significant doubt upon the group’s ability to continue as a going concern.

It came as the bank, known for its hot coral pink cards, reported an annual loss of £114m for the year to February 2020. That is more than double the £50m loss the bank logged a year earlier.

Aside from the GDP data, today marks another installment of the company earnings bonanza we have seen this week. We will run through some of those now.

First up, NatWest, the artist formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland, has matched its peers by putting aside billions of pounds to cover coronavirus loan losses, tipping it to a loss for the second quarter.

The Guardian’s banking reporter, Kalyeena Makortoff, writes:

NatWest tumbled into the red by £1.3bn in the second quarter, as it stashed away another £2.1bn to cover bad debts caused by the coronavirus crisis.

Preparations for a further downturn wiped out profits at the taxpayer-owned lender, which reported a £1.7bn profit during the same period last year.

Its earnings were stung by a £2.1bn loan loss provision to cover a jump in defaults in the coming months, as businesses and households struggle to repay their debts because of the economic slump triggered by the coronavirus outbreak. Analysts had expected a second-quarter charge of £943m.

NatWest said the impairment charge – which brings total provisions so far this year to £2.9bn – “reflected the deterioration of the economic outlook”. Full-year loan loss charges are expected to total £3.5bn-£4.5bn.

European stock markets have gained at the opening bell.

The FTSE 100 in London is up by less than 0.05% - perhaps not surprising for a scorching day at the end of July - at about 5,986 points.

However, France’s Cac 40 has gained 0.5%, and Spain’s Ibex is up by 0.6%. That helped the Euro Stoxx index of blue-chip countries across Europe gain 0.5%.