London pre-open: FTSE to open unchanged

7th May 2013 07:29

City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open unchanged from Friday's close of 6,521 following the Bank Holiday weekend. Investors will today have to digest the news that the Reserve Bank of Australia has made the surprise decision to reduce its interest rates to a record low of 2.75% - the move was potentially on the cards, but has come much sooner than anticipated. In other economic news today, the UK is set to report on new car registrations, while the BRC shop price index has revealed that shop price inflation declined to a three and a half year low in April, hitting 0.4% compared to 1.4% the previous month. In UK company news, BG Group has signed a deal with China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) for the sale of additional interest in the Queensland Curtis LNG project in Australia for $1.93bn. The FTSE 100 company will also supply an additional five million tonnes per year of liquefied natural gas. CNOOC will reimburse BG for its share of the project expenditure incurred from January 1st.Drinks giant Diageo has announced the appointment of Ivan Menezes as Chief Executive Officer. Menezes will begin on July 1st and succeeds Paul Walsh who will step down from the board at the annual general meeting in September and retire from the company in June 2014.Premier Oil has reported the he successful well test of the Luno II discovery, in which it has a 30 per cent interest. The production test achieved an average flow rate of 2,044 barrels of oil per day of good quality crude oil. Premier said it estimates gross resources across the Luno II structure to be in the range of 75 to 130m barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) of which approximately 80% are liquids.