LON­DON-Glob­al mar­kets edged low­er in lack­lus­ter trad­ing yes­ter­day as in­vestors re­mained cau­tious ahead of a cru­cial week for Greece, whose lead­ers will try to show they are mak­ing progress in im­ple­ment­ing eco­nom­ic re­forms. In Eu­rope, the FTSE-100 in­dex of lead­ing British com­pa­nies closed 0.5 per cent low­er at 5,824.37 while Ger­many's DAX fell 0.1 per cent to 7,033.68. France's CAC-40 shed 0.2 per cent to 3,480.58. In­vestors this week are watch­ing Greek Prime Min­is­ter An­to­nis Sama­ras' vis­it to Ger­many and France, where he is ex­pect­ed to ask for an ex­ten­sion on Greece's dead­line to meet fis­cal tar­gets as the coun­try car­ries out painful re­forms.

Lux­em­bourg Prime Min­is­ter Jean-Claude Junck­er, who chairs the eu­ro­zone fi­nance min­is­ters' meet­ings, will be in Athens on Wednes­day to meet Sama­ras. Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter Gui­do West­er­welle said yes­ter­day that Athens must fol­low through with re­forms but added that Berlin wants Greece to re­main in the eu­ro­zone. There is, how­ev­er, lit­tle chance of Ger­many sup­port­ing a third res­cue pack­age, Volk­er Kaud­er, a se­nior al­ly of Chan­cel­lor An­gela Merkel, was quot­ed by Der Spiegel as say­ing. Ahead of Sama­ras' meet­ings, Greece's fi­nance of­fi­cials were try­ing on yes­ter­day to se­cure &eu­ro;11.5 bil­lion (US$14.19 bil­lion) in bud­get sav­ings nec­es­sary for the coun­try to con­tin­ue re­ceiv­ing its bailout funds. Greece's debt in­spec­tors will is­sue a re­port next month on whether the coun­try is do­ing enough to cut its debt.

In Asia, the Shang­hai Com­pos­ite In­dex dropped 0.4 per cent to close at 2,106.96, the low­est lev­el since ear­ly 2009 as in­vestors con­tin­ue to be cau­tious about the world's sec­ond largest econ­o­my amid mount­ing signs of a slow­down. The small­er Shen­zhen Com­pos­ite In­dex gained 0.3 per cent to 879.25. Agri­cul­ture, biotech­nol­o­gy and food com­pa­nies led gains while in­sur­ance, re­al es­tate and en­gi­neer­ing com­pa­nies dropped. A re­port over the week­end that prop­er­ty prices in Ju­ly rose slight­ly in­di­cat­ed the prop­er­ty mar­ket was ben­e­fit­ing from re­cent in­ter­est rate cuts, an­a­lysts said. But in­vestors were still down­beat about prospects for fur­ther big stim­u­lus mea­sures, which are of­ten an­nounced on week­ends or hol­i­days.

"Every week­end in­vestors are ex­pect­ing the (Chi­nese) cen­tral gov­ern­ment would throw out po­lices and every Mon­day comes in and there are no poli­cies," said Jack­son Wong, a vice pres­i­dent at Tan­rich Se­cu­ri­ties. "That dis­ap­points in­vestors in gen­er­al." Else­where, Japan's Nikkei 225 in­dex rose 0.1 per cent to close at 9,171.16 while South Ko­rea's Kospi was prac­ti­cal­ly un­changed to end at 1,946.31. Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 0.1 per cent to 20,104.27. In cur­ren­cies, the eu­ro was trad­ing at US$1.2346, down 0.1 per cent from Fri­day, while the dol­lar was steady at 79.42 yen against the Japan­ese cur­ren­cy. (AP)