London pre-open: Footsie set for lower start despite yen weakness, oil price gains

22nd Apr 2016 07:22

(ShareCast News) - Stocks are expected to start the session lower amid a sharp drop in the value of the yen and another move higher in crude oil futures.The Footsie is being called to start the session down by about 32 points from Friday's closing level of 6,381.44.Keeping a lid on sentiment among investors in equities, shares of Alphabet and Microsoft slid overnight on Wall Street following the release of their latest quarterly results. Shares in Google's parent company ended the after-hours session off by -5.13% to $52.92 while stock in Microsoft dropped -5.92% to $714.20."While there's clearly some negativity coming from the US and Asian sessions overnight, driven primarily by some disappointing earnings from the former, I think there's probably also some profit taking going on, given the levels we're now back at," Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda said in a research note sent to clients.Nevertheless, all eyes on Friday morning were on foreign exchange markets after a Bloomberg report citing "people familiar with the matter" said the Bank of Japan might offer negative rates on some of its loans to lender, sending the country's currency spiralling lower.As of 07:30 dollar/yen was 1.01% higher at 110.57.In parallel, front month Brent crude futures were higher by 1.22% to $45.08 per barrel on the ICE while the Shanghai Stock Exchange's Composite Index was drifting lower by 0.24% to 2,945.71.Kuwait's oil production had returned to its pre-strike levels of about 2.9m barrels per day, Bloomberg also reported.Against that backdrop, early in the session markets were expected to turn their gaze towards the release of the latest euro area manufacturing sector purchasing managers' indices referencing the month of April.Hammerson lines up credit linesProperty development and investment company Hammerson shored up its finances on Friday, successfully syndicating and signing a £420m unsecured revolving credit facility with eight international banks, at an initial margin of 90 basis points. The FTSE 100 firm said the new facility will refinance the existing £150m facility, which would have matured in April 2017 and featured a margin of 150 basis points. UBM has acquired Business Journals Inc (BJI), a producer of fashion trade shows in New York and Las Vegas, for $69m in cash. As part of UBM's focus on events since it agreed to sell its PR Newswire arm in December, it said the addition of BJI was highly complementary to its existing fashion trade show portfolio and was expected to make a modest post tax contribution this financial year.