The Canadian Press

North American stock markets headed for a mainly lower open on Thursday with the Greek debt crisis and the financial sector in focus.

The Canadian dollar was slightly higher, up a tenth of a cent to US99.08 cents.

The Dow Jones industrial futures were ahead seven points to 10,670, the Nasdaq futures were down three points to 1,931, and the S&P 500 futures stepped back an eighth of a point to 1,160.2.

Germany has said this week that Greece’s debt problems can be addressed only by the country’s austerity program.

And on Thursday, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said that his country would have to resort to help from the IMF, which would be a humiliation for the eurozone, if it does not receive aid from fellow European countries.

Greece and its debt crisis had moved to the background earlier this week on hopes that an EU summit next week would come up with a bilateral loan proposal to help the country finance its huge deficit. Also, Standard & Poor’s had announced it was taking Greece off so-called credit watch with the rating agency pronouncing itself satisfied with the Greek government’s austerity measures.

Meanwhile, financial stocks could be under selling pressure after American banking giant Citigroup cut its rating on the global financial sector to neutral from overweight.

The energy sector will likely start the session off lower as oil prices slipped following two days of sharp advances that were fueled by signs U.S. crude demand may be improving.

The April crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange declined 63 cents to US$82.30 a barrel.

The April gold contract on the Nymex gained $1.50 to US$1,125.70 an ounce while May copper was unchanged at US$3.41 a pound.

Overseas, the downbeat mood sent Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average down one per cent while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 0.3 per cent.

London’s FTSE 100 index rose 0.1 per cent, Frankfurt’s DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were flat.

Investors also took in a strong earnings report from FedEx. The world’s second-largest package delivery company reported that its fiscal third-quarter profit more than doubled from a year earlier to US$239 million. The company, considered an economic bellwether because of the variety of products it ships, also raised the forecast for full-year earnings on expectations of “a continued modest recovery in the global economy.”

In other corporate news, A U.S. federal judge has dismissed a shareholder lawsuit against CIBC (TSX:CM) claiming that the big Canadian bank misled investors about its exposure to the U.S. subprime mortgage market. A Manhattan court judge said the bank was only one of many financial institutions that did not foresee just how great a toll the U.S. mortgage market downturn would take on its bottom line.