London pre-open: Small gains expected early on

UK stocks are expected to start the second quarter in positive territory, with the FTSE 100 called to open around the 8,000 mark on Tuesday.

The FTSE 100, which rose 0.3% in a shortened trading week last week, gained 3% over the first three months of the year to settle at 7,952.62 on Thursday. According to Bloomberg, futures were showing a rise of around 45 to 50 points early on.

"Following a robust first quarter for risk assets, market bulls were poised to maintain their dominance entering the second quarter buoyed by positive data from China and optimism surrounding the Federal Reserve's preferred price gauge, released late last week," said Stephen Innes, managing partner a SPI Asset Management.

"This gauge was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as sufficient to allay concerns about inflation despite recent Consumer Price Index overshoots."

The PCE index showed that annual inflation in the US rose to 2.5% in February from 2.4% the month before – the first acceleration since September. However, the core annual rate fell to 2.8% from 2.9%.

Tuesday looks like another busy session in terms of economic data, with UK lending and house price figures due out, along with Germany inflation and US job openings, along with a number of hotly anticipated speeches from members of the Federal Reserve.

In corporate news, America's drug regulator gave the green light to AstraZeneca for the add-on use of Voydeva in the treatment of extravascular haemolysis (EVH) in patients with paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (PNH). PNH is a condition under which some patients' immune systems destroy a larger proportion of red blood cells than they should, whilst EVH was the condition in which red blood cells outside of blood vessels were destroyed. Voydeva could now be used as an add-on therapy to ravulizumab or eculizumab to treat EVH in adults with PNH.

Bank of Georgia updated the market on the acquisition of Ameriabank, having now received regulatory clearance from the National Bank of Georgia. The FTSE 250 company received shareholder approval for the purchase on 14 March. With subsequent unconditional approvals from Armenian regulatory bodies, including the Competition Protection Commission and the Central Bank of Armenia, Bank of Georgia said it could now move to finalise the acquisition agreement. (edited)

RHI Magnesita said it was buying Resco Group, a US-based producer of alumina monolithics and wide range of basic and non-basic refractories, for up to $430m. Resco makes products for use in the petrochemical, cement, aluminium, and steel making industries operating seven plants and two raw material sites in the US and two plants in the UK and Canada.