London pre-open: Stocks seen higher as talks in Athens resume

26th Jan 2012 07:25

City sources expect the FTSE 100 to open up around 20 points from yesterday's close of 5,723 with Greece again in focus today as talks resume between private creditors and the government. Meanwhile, stocks surged on Wall Street last night after the Federal Reserve announced that the federal funds rate would stay low until late 2014. Kazakhstan-based copper miner Kazakhmys met all of its major production targets in 2011, and expects to maintain similar levels of copper output in 2012. The group's sales contracts for the coming year have all been completed.Mining giant Anglo American said iron ore production in the final quarter of 2011 increased by 5% from a year earlier to 12.4m tonnes, mainly due to initial production from Kolomela mine and a continued improvement in performance at Amapá. Better weather in 2011 at the end of the year contributed to a strong improvement in like-for-like (LFL) sales at pubs group Mitchells and Butlers, but trading has been more subdued in January. LFL sales in the nine weeks to January 21st, 2012, were up 6.5% from the corresponding period a year earlier. As a result, like-for-like sales in the first 17 weeks of the financial year were up 4.4%.  BC