M&S FY results seen at 'similar' level to prior year, Smiths Group sees growth accelerate in Q1

London pre-open

The FTSE 100 was called to open 15.8 points lower ahead of the bell on Wednesday after closing just 0.08% higher on Wednesday.

Stocks to watch

UK food and clothing retailer Marks & Spencer said on Wednesday that it expected to deliver annual results “similar” to expectations as interim pre-tax profits rose 11.3%.

Clothing and homewares sales rose 14% in the six months to October 1, while food revenue was up 5.6%. Group revenue increased 8.5% to £5.5bn.

Engineering company Smiths said on Wednesday that first-quarter growth had accelerated as it delivered a full-year performance ahead of expectations.

Smiths said revenues had slipped 1.8% year-on-year to £1.08bn, while pre-tax profits ticked up 0.6% to £31.1m. Earnings per share were flat at 10.8p each.

Newspaper round-up

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed to executives that the company will begin laying off employees on Wednesday morning, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. Zuckerberg addressed hundreds of executives at the company on Tuesday morning, foreshadowing large cuts. He mentioned recruiting and business teams as groups that would see layoffs, according to the WSJ, adding an internal announcement of the company's layoff plans is expected around 0600 eastern time on Wednesday. – Guardian

A strike on London Underground will halt virtually all tube services and slow much of the capital to a crawl on Thursday, in the ongoing dispute over jobs and pensions. Some London Overground and Docklands Light Railway services may also be affected by the 24-hour walkout by members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union, while buses are expected to be extremely busy and roads congested. Elizabeth Line trains will run as normal. – Guardian

Companies House has been accused of being "an enabler of fraud" as figures show tens of thousands of people claim their addresses are being wrongly used to register businesses. Companies House on Tuesday revealed that 40,927 people complained their addresses had been listed as an organisation's main office without their permission over the past three years. – Telegraph

Elon Musk sold shares in Tesla worth almost $4.0bn after completing his takeover of Twitter. The world’s richest person has now sold shares worth almost $20.0bn in the electric carmaker since first disclosing a stake in Twitter in the spring. – The Times

The former boss of Denmark's biggest bank has been cleared in a multimillion-pound civil case that centred on one of the world’s worst money laundering scandals. A group of 155 institutional shareholders had claimed that Thomas Borgen, who ran Danske Bank until 2018, had information about the scandal that should have been disclosed to the stock market in 2014. They sued him for DKr 2.4bn, arguing the former chief executive was liable for the losses they had suffered in the fallout from the controversy. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks were in the green at the end of trading on Tuesday as polls shut up shop for the 2022 US midterm election.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.02% at 33,160.83, while the S&P 500 was 0.56% firmer at 3,828.11 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.49% softer at 10,616.20.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com