BUZZ-Top of the Street: Pernod Ricard, Swatch, Carrefour, SKF, RWE

A round-up of notable broker activity this morning from Europe's top-ranked* analysts:

** Pernod Ricard (TLO: RI-U.TI - news) : Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS-PB - news) cuts to "neutral" citing among other reasons growing evidence that the co's U.S. market is slowing and the risk of greater trade restrictions

** Morgan Stanley (Xetra: 885836 - news) upgrades Swatch Group to "overweight", seeing long-term benefits in co's change to direct-to-consumer distribution model with a much greater focus on e-commerce

** Top-ranked Deutsche Bank (IOB: 0H7D.IL - news) analyst Maxime Mallet raises Carrefour (LSE: 0NPH.L - news) to "hold" on better valuation premium to peers, more reasonable consensus, and easier comps in France

** 5-star Liberum cuts SKF (LSE: 0NWW.L - news) to "hold", as it no longer sees room for significant earnings upside (now less than 10 pct)

** Portzamparc cuts Rubis (LSE: 0MUI.L - news) to "hold" saying valuation looks less attractive following the stock's rise on Friday after publication of FY results

** Rotork (Frankfurt: RO41.F - news) : Peel Hunt ups to "buy" on return to more favourable oil and gas market conditions, says co's cash restructuring and cost savings plan about to accelerate

REINSTATEMENTS

** Credit Suisse (IOB: 0QP5.IL - news) resumes coverage on RWE (IOB: 0FUZ.IL - news) with "outperform" on potential added value brought by the deal with E.ON ; HSBC, on the other hand, cuts RWE (Amsterdam: RW6.AS - news) to "reduce"

(*Analyst rankings from Thomson Reuters StarMine. Scale is from 1-star to 5-star with 5 being best. Analysts ranked on earnings accuracy as well as relative performance of recommendations over trailing 12-month & 24-month periods.)