London pre-open: Stocks to nudge lower as pound gains ground
London stocks were set to nudge a touch lower at the open on Monday as the pound gains ground against the dollar and the euro.
The FTSE 100 was expected to open three points lower at 7,520.
On the data front, the CBI industrial trends survey is at 1100 BST, while third-quarter UK GDP is due out on Wednesday.
Sterling appeared to be getting a lift after German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged that the EU side also needed to move on its negotiating position in the Brexit talks.
CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: “This would appear to be a significant shift of tone at a time when the EU stance has previously shown no signs of compromise. What also appeared to be significant was an admission by Donald Tusk that the separate internal EU27 talks on trade would take UK proposals into account.”
In corporate news, Spire Healthcare has rejected a cash-and-shares offer from South Africa's Mediclinic International.
Mediclinic, a FTSE 100 member that already owns a 29.9% stake in its FTSE 250 peer, offered 150p cash and 0.232 new shares for each Spire share, which equated to an offer valued at 298.6p per share.
GlaxoSmithKline said that the US Food and Drug Administration has approved Shingrix for the prevention of shingles in adults over 50.
Shingrix is a non-live, recombinant subunit vaccine given intramuscularly in two doses.
After completing a strategic review, Electra Private Equity has decided "current market conditions do not support new investment" and so proposed handing back most of its cash and dropping its focus on private equity to become "more flexible".
Alongside a proposed £350m special dividend, the company plans to further simplify its corporate and underlying partnership structures to cut costs and removing the words "Private Equity" from its name.
Waste-to-product business Renewi said that results for the year are expected to be “significantly above” its previous expectations following a particularly strong performance in September.
In a trading update for the year to 31 March 2018, the company said the commercial division performed particularly well, with increased waste volumes driven by improving economic growth and construction market recovery.