London pre-open: FTSE to track US stocks modestly higher

7th Dec 2012 07:31

City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open up 11 points from yesterday's close of 5,901, tracking reasonable gains seen in the US overnight. Attentions will now turn to Friday's US jobs report, which is expected to show a 90,000 gain in non-farm payrolls in November, significantly lower than the 171,000 seen the previous month. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is forecast to remain at 7.9%, according to the consensus. However, Neil Irwin from The Washington Post believes that the figures are going to be a "giant mess". "The biggest reason is Hurricane Sandy, which struck the Northeast at the tail end of October and has made most economic data in the last couple of weeks hard to parse," Irwin wrote on Thursday. As for this side of the pond, UK industrial production figures are due out in the morning and are forecast to show a 0.5% monthly increase in October, compared with the 1.7% fall the month before. However, manufacturing production is expected to slip by 0.2% month-on-month in the same month, compared with 0.1% increase in September. In company news, house builder Berkeley Group saw revenue and profit surge in the first half, as it declared an interim dividend of 15p per share, compared with nil the year before. Revenue jumped 69.4% from £404.9 to £686m, while profit before tax increased by 40.7% from £101.1 to £142.2m.UK house builder Bellway has reported a six per cent rise in reservations to around 100 per week in the 18 weeks ended November 30th, as a result of an improvement to customers' ability to access higher loan to value mortgage finance. Aside from this, market conditions during the period remained largely unchanged. The average selling price of reservations, net of sales incentives, has increased by 4% to £195,800, reflecting continuing changes in product mix. Sweeteners and food products giant Tate & Lyle has agreed to a 347m-pound partial pensioner buy-in which covers nearly half of its total pensioner liabilities. The firm said that the trustee of the its group pension scheme has made the agreement with financial services giant Legal & General about the buy-in which covers around 43% of its commitments, "which effectively hedges these liabilities in full".