London pre-open: Stocks to track rise on Wall Street
The Footsie is being called to start the day 58 points higher from Thursday's close of 6,374.82.
The Footsie is expected to start the session with a bang, following the release of a dovish set of Fed meeting minutes overnight.
"A fed rate hike seems old news now and Janet Yellen has done well to dampen any twitchy feelings of market crashes and grey Mondays. The fed minutes underlined the global economic slowdown and the potential to threaten the U.S economic outlook.
"With their intentions now looking to hold off rates until 2016, this gave investors the courage to jump into riskier assets and hence equity markets across the board are up, said Jonathan Sudaria, Night Dealer at London Capital Group.
There is little on the macroeconomic agenda this Friday. Figures on French and Italian factory production are scheduled for release, together with the latest data on the UK's visible trade deficit.
Stateside, data on import prices and wholesale inventories are the only data expected today.
Glencore to slash zinc output by a third
Commodities trader Glencore will cut 500,000 tonnes or around a third of its annual zinc production as it looks to combat declining prices.The company said the changes would reduce fourth quarter 2015 mine production by around 100,000 of contained zinc metal.
"The main reason for the reduction is to preserve the value of Glencore's reserves in the ground at a time of low zinc and lead prices, which do not correctly value the scarce nature of our resources," it said.
Petrofac has terminated its contract with ZPMC. The oil and gas service provider announced the decision on Friday after performance issues over the construction of its deepwater multi-purpose offshore vessel. Chief executive Ayman Asfari said the board is reviewing its options. "It is regrettable that it has become necessary for us to take this decision.”
Ladbrokes has signed a £1.35bn facility to provide financing for its proposed merger with Coral. The new facility for the FTSE 250 company is with a syndicate of relationship banks and has three tranches available for drawing once the merger is completed.
The three tranches include a £600m term facility to be rapid in a year, with an extension option to January 2018. The other two tranches are a £400m revolving credit facility until October 2020 and a £350m revolving credit facility until June 2019.