European stocks were expected to open lower on Tuesday after stocks and commodities fell in Asia overnight before recovering in late trade. Investor concerns over the pace of action to resolve the debt crisis continues to weigh, but weaker-than-expected PMI data out of China had a short lived impact on overnight trade.
The FTSE is called 61 points lower, the DAX in Frankfurt is expected to open down by 72 points and the CAC 40 is called lower by 36 points.
Credit Suissesaid early on Tuesday it would cut another 1,500 jobs after reporting weak third quarter earnings.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its biggest one day loss in four weeks on Monday following news that futures brokerage MF Global had filed for bankruptcy due to bad bets on euro zone debt.
The collapse of MF Global is likely to serve as a warning to investors to steer clear of riskier assets and remind them of the dangers of overexposure to European bonds. The bankruptcy protection application is the seventh largest by assets in US history.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou made the surprise move on Monday of calling for a referendum on a second bailout package for Greece, which could result in a vote on his government should the Greek people vote against the deal. Papandreou said he needed wider support for the reforms and austerity measures he had introduced as part of a bailout agreement with the EU and IMF, but the majority of Greeks oppose the conditions set by the international lenders.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon will hold a meeting on Wednesday with the country's banks in a follow-up to the plan European leaders agreed last week to combat the euro zone debt crisis. The bank heads will meet Fillon, Finance Minister Francois Baroin and Bank of France chief Christian Noyer, and Fillon's office said the talks would focus on the accord between EU leaders and on financing of the economy.
Italian Mario Draghi will begin his eight-year term as the new head of the ECB on Tuesday succeeding Jean Claude Trichet at the helm of the euro zone's central bank. In an interview with CNBC, Trichet said he believed the European Central Bank had understood the gravity of the debt crisis in the euro zone, while many sovereign nations had not.
Chinese President Hu Jintao will visit Salzburg in Austria on Tuesday en route to the G20 summit in Cannes which begins on Thursday.
Dutch manufacturer DSM reported better-than-expected third quarter operating profit of 231 million euros ($318 million), up 37 percent on a year ago, but the firm claimed there had been a slowdown in the electronics and electrical markets as well as construction.
Danske Bank is also due to report on Tuesday, while Imperial Tobacco is expected to announce its preliminary results.
Economic data includes third quarter GDP data out of the UK at 9:30 GMT.