While the Ukraine war grinds on and Nato conducts military exercises in the Baltics and central Europe, this week will commemorate the D-Day landings that enabled the liberation of Europe in the second world war.
There will be sporting thrills with the 24-hour Le Mans race in France as well as sporting scandal with the opening of the fraud case against Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini, the former heads of world and European football, in Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court.
France heads to the polls again for parliamentary elections, while the Belgian royal family heads to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Congolese hope for an apology for colonial oppression.
We will be reaching for the skies with several space mission launches, as well as the FT’s Investing in Space conference, while looking down (with some concern) on World Ocean Day, created to commemorate and act to protect our blue planet.
Economic data
The OECD will be giving its periodic outlook for the global economy on Wednesday, but we will also be getting updates on the more immediate situation with inflation figures for the US and China on Friday.
Monetary policy will again be centre stage with the rate-setting committees of the European Central Bank, Reserve Bank of Australia and the Central Bank of Russia all meeting this week.
Companies
As we come into land with the end of this quarter’s earnings season, the European budget airline Wizz Air will be reporting full-year numbers. It has not been a good week for the aviation sector with inadequate staffing levels to cope with a rush of holidaymakers creating chaos at airports — a problem predicted to last into the summer. However, Wizz has ambitious growth plans. Can it convince investors that it has clear skies ahead?
Inditex rules the retailing catwalk bringing new trends to the high street. But inflation in input costs — from labour to freight to energy — is the biggest challenge for new chair Marta Ortega, daughter of Inditex’s co-founder Amancio Ortega, who will be shepherding her first earnings call on Wednesday after she took the position in April.
Read the full week ahead calendar here