Bank of England may cut rate

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet may on Thursday signal that growth is increasingly replacing inflation as their biggest concern.

UK policy makers will lower their benchmark interest rate by a quarter point to 5.25 percent, according to all but two of 61 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

While the ECB will probably leave its key rate at 4 percent, Trichet may indicate the region's expansion isn't as strong as anticipated.

Europe's economy is weakening as US growth falters, pushing King to follow Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S Bernanke in cutting rates and pushing the ECB to soften its inflation- fighting rhetoric.

UK house prices fell for the first time since 2000 last quarter and the euro region's service industries grew the least in more than four years in Jan.