London pre-open: Heavy falls anticipated

2nd Sep 2011 07:18

Taking their lead from Wall Street, which closed lower ahead of today's August jobs data, London' leading shares are set to open well in the red, with City traders predicting the Footsie will open 82 points down from yesterday's close of 5,419.Drugs behemoth AstraZeneca has announced generally favourable results of tests of its cholesterol treatment, CRESTOR, though not the knock-out blow versus LIPITOR, the rival treatment from Pfizer, that it might have been hoping for. The study measures changes in plaque levels in coronary arteries using ultrasound imaging. The results for the primary efficacy measure demonstrated a numerically greater reduction in favour of CRESTOR versus atorvastatin but did not reach statistical significance. For the secondary IVUS measure, CRESTOR demonstrated a statistically significant reduction compared with atorvastatin.Global technology business Smiths Group is to purchase Power Holdings, a designer and manufacturer of specialist power distribution, conditioning and monitoring systems. The purchase price of $235m will be subject to post closing adjustments with respect to working capital at completion.Ukrainian iron ore pellet producer Ferrexpo has secured a new credit facility of $420m at a rate two and a quarter points above the London interbank offer rate (LIBOR). The credit facility can be drawn at any time during the loan term which has a maturity of five years including amortization over two years. London Stock Exchange Group has confirmed it is in discussions with LCH.Clearnet Group regarding a potential takeover of the Anglo-French clearing house.