London pre-open: Hopes of Greek debt swap boost sentiment

8th Mar 2012 07:28

City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open up 14 points from yesterday's close of 5,791, as investors gain confidence on reports that Greece is continuing to edge closer to the 75% participation in the debt swap deal. Supermarket giant Morrison boasted that it has 'delivered in a challenging year' as it beat both sales and profit expectations in 2011, after seeing a record number of customers in its stores. Turnover excluding VAT rose 7% from £16,749m to £17,663m, ahead of expectations of £17,570bn. Without the inclusion of fuel sales, store sales increased by 3.9% to £13,436bn, with new stores contributing 2.1% of this growth.Multi-metal mining giant Xstrata has agreed to acquire the Sukunka hard coking coal deposit from Talisman Energy for 500m dollars cash. Sukunka, located in the Peace River Coalfield of northern British Columbia, is close to the First Coal Corporation and Lossan tenements bought by Xstrata Coal last year. General insurer Aviva said it beat all of its operating targets in a tough 2011, but profits took a tumble as investment variance gains seen in 2010 were reversed last year. The group combined operating ratio, which measures how wisely an insurance company has taken on insurance business - a lower number is better - improved to 96.8% from 97.1% in 2010.