London pre-open: All eyes on Davos

The Footsie is being called to start the session up to 31 points higher from Thursday’s closing value of 5,773.79.

Overnight, the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Composite Index finished the last session of the week with an advance of 1.25% to 2,916.56. The Nikkei is clocking up gains of 5.88% alongside a weakening yen. Dollar/yen is up 0.50% to 118.08 as of 09:50GMT.

Traders are keeping a close eye on the flow of policy-sensitive remarks coming out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“In any event market attention is likely to remain on the ECB President later this morning when he gives a speech from Davos, at the World Economic Forum, Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK said to clients.

Data-wise, the spotlight will be on today’s retail sales and public sector borrowing requirements in the UK.

In the Euro area emphasis will be on preliminary readings on manufacturing and service sector activity in January.

Close Brothers’ sees good growth in loan book

Close Brothers’ loan book rose 4.9% in the five months to the end of December to £6bn, reflecting growth across all of the group’s lending businesses. However, assets under management fell to £9.4bn from £10.8bn at the end of July, which the company attributed to negative market movements and the disposal of its corporate activities.

The group said its broking arm, Winterflood, was hit by difficult market conditions which have persisted since the start of the financial year.

WPP’s global digital agency POSSIBLE Worldwide has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Conrad Caine GmbH, a full service digital agency headquartered in Munich, for an undisclosed sum. Conrad Caine delivers digital strategy, user experience, asset creation, campaigns and CRM to its clients.

For the year ended 31 December 2014, its revenues were about €8.5m with gross assets of approximately €3.6m.

Hammerson has exchanged contracts with Birmingham City Council to acquire the new Grand Central shopping centre in Birmingham for £335m.It said it is in advanced discussions with an existing joint venture partner on other assets about entering into a 50-50 joint venture for the future ownership of Grand Central.

Grand Central, which opened in September 2015, provides 435,000 sq ft of retail space, anchored by a 250,000 sq ft John Lewis department store. It was developed by Network Rail and Birmingham City Council as part of the £750m New Street Station regeneration project.