London pre-open: Stocks seen higher, taking their cue from Wall Street
London’s FTSE 100 is being called to open higher on Thursday, taking its cue from an upbeat session in the US.
City sources expect the index to open up 49 points at 6132.
On the economic calendar, UK services PMI is due at 0930 BST, while in the US, trade balance and initial jobless claims are at 1330 BST and ISM non-manufacturing is at 1500 BST.
EasyJet lifts full-year profit guidance
Budget airline EasyJet lifted its full-year profit forecast to between £675m and £700m from a previous range of £620m to £660m as it said record passenger numbers in August offset higher costs. The load factor for August 2015 was 94.4%, a new record for any month, while passenger numbers for the month were 7.06m, which was also a record and is the second successive month of over 7m passengers.
Barclays Bank has agreed to sell its Retail Banking, Wealth and Investment Management businesses and part of its Corporate Banking business in Portugal which serves small and medium-sized enterprises to Bankinter. It has also agreed to sell its insurance business in Portugal to Bankinter Seguros de Vida, S.A. Seguros y Reaseguros, which operates an insurance joint-venture with Mapfre. The bank will continue to operate Barclaycard, investment banking and multinational corporate banking in Portugal.
UK motor retail and aftersales service company Lookers has acquired Addison Motors Limited for £87.5m in cash. The acquisition is being funded using new banking facilities made available to Lookers by Bank of Ireland, Barclays Bank, HSBC Bank, Lloyds Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Yorkshire Bank.