London pre-open: Mixed reaction from economists to Chinese manufacturing PMI

The Footsie was being called to start lower on Monday morning following the release of mixed manufacturing data out of China, although some analysts seemed more hopeful than others.

The top flight index was expected to start the day 38 points down from Friday's closing level of 6,361.09.

At 49.8 China's 'official' manufacturing sector purchasing managers' index for October came in just shy of the 50.0 mark expected by the market, reflecting a third consecutive month of contraction in the sector.

That led at least two well-known pundits to muse about the need for further stimulus in Asia's largest economy.

In parallel, China's non-manufacturing PMI slipped to its lowest point since December 2008.

Caixin's manufacturing PMI improved by 1.3 percentage points to 48.3. That was indicative of the sector still "struggling," Deutsche Bank said.

Nonetheless, the broker's Zhiwei Zhang noted that the rise in the non-official [manufacturing] reading was the biggest so far in 2015. Combined with some of the strength in key subcomponents (namely output and new orders) Zhiwei thought that was consistent with his expectation that economic activity was picking up in the fourth quarter.

The economist reiterated his forecast for GDP to rebound to a 7.2% pace from the 6.9% clip observed in the third quarter.

HSBC beats forecasts

HSBC posted a better-than-expected 32% rise in third-quarter pre-tax profit thanks to the bank’s cost-cutting programme and reduced fines. Third-quarter reported pre-tax profit came in at $6.10bn compared with $4.61bn in the same period last year, surpassing consensus expectations of around $5.2bn, as costs from regulatory fines fell by $1.4bn from 2014.

Ryanair posted a 37% rise in first-half profit after tax as it said full-year net profit will be towards the upper end of its guidance range and lifted its traffic target. First-half profit after tax, excluding the one-off gain from the sale of its stake in Aer Lingus, came in at €1.09bn from €795m in the same period last year, on revenue of €4.04b, up 14%.

British Land has let the first floor of March Arch House, W1, to Cirrus Logic, which is aprovider of analogue and digital signal processing equipment. Earlier this year, the company completed deals with private investor BXR Partners LLP and global gaming technology company GTECH to occupy the building's fourth and second floors respectively.