EU Crisis Damage Seen in Worst Quarter Since Lehman Wake

Euro-area economic data due this week will probably show the damage inflicted by the region’s sovereign debt crisis with the worst quarterly decline in output for almost four years.

Gross domestic product shrank 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter, according to the median of 45 estimates gathered by Bloomberg News. That would be the biggest decline since the first quarter of 2009, when GDP fell 2.8 percent in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The data is due to be published on Feb. 14.