LHCb status and early physics prospects

LHCb is a dedicated detector for b and c physics at the LHC. I will present a concise review of the detector design and expected performance together with some very early physics results and prospects. An integrated luminosity of ∼ 0.2 fb‐1, which should be collected in 2010, will already allow LHCb to perform a number of very significant mesurements with the potential of revealing New Physics effects, such as the search of the decay B0s → μ+ μ‐ beyond the limit set by CDF and D0.