London pre-open: Markets to extend losses following sell-off

6th Jun 2013 07:57

Markets are expected to open lower on Thursday following a dramatic sell-off the day before as traders continue to show caution ahead of the all-important US jobs report tomorrow.City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open down four points from yesterday's close of 6.419. The index dropped a total of 2.1% on Wednesday on heightened speculation that the Federal Reserve could soon start to scale back its stimulus programme.The European Central Bank and the Bank of England are to announce their policy decisions this afternoon with both expected to leave rates unchanged. Stocks to watcheasyJet flew more passengers on fuller planes in May, according to the budget airline's traffic statistics released on Thursday morning. The firm said that passenger numbers - these represent the number of earned seats flow, whether or not the customer turns up, as easyJet is a no-refund airline - increased by 3.4% year-on-year to 5.61m in May. Meanwhile, the load factor - which represents the number of passengers as a proportion of seats available - improved by 10 basis points (bp) to 88.1%.Multinational oil and gas services company Wood Group has landed a contract with The Dow Chemical Company for construction of an ethylene unit in Texas. The group will provide services for construction of around 140 miles of ethane, ethylene, propane and propylene pipelines, associated interconnections, and station modifications between Dow Texas operations in Freeport, Texas, and facilities at Mt. Belvieu, Texas.Speciality chemicals company Johnson Matthey reported weaker annual results, in what it described as a challenging year, but said it remains well positioned to grow its business over the medium and long term. Underlying pre-tax profit declined to £389.2m for the year ended March 31st 2013 from £426.0m a year earlier. Revenue reduced to £10.7bn from £12.bn before.BC