London pre-open: Stocks seen a little higher, with Brexit in focus

London stocks were expected to open a little higher on Thursday after the House of Commons gave Prime Minister Theresa May the green light to formally begin the Brexit process.

The FTSE 100 was seen starting the session eight points higher at 7,196.

CMC Markets’ Michael Hewson said: “The pound has continued to hold up well as the Brexit process took another step on the road to the triggering of Article 50 last night as the House of Commons finally kicked the Article 50 bill up to the House of Lords unamended, for their deliberations which are due to start on February 20th.”

There are no major UK data releases due, but in the US, initial jobless claims are at 1330 GMT and wholesale inventories at 1500 GMT.

In corporate news, Smith & Nephew reported full year sales in line with forecasts and earnings beating the consensus despite declining sales in the fourth quarter. For 2017 the medical devices group said it expected stronger revenue growth and an improvement in trading profit margin.

Aviva is to sell its 50% stake in life insurance joint venture Antarius to Sogecap, a subsidiary of French bank Société Générale, for £425m (€500m).

The sale of Antarius, which is currently owned by Aviva and Crédit du Nord, a separate subsidiary of Société Générale, follows Crédit du Nord's decision in 2015 to exercise its option to buy Aviva's stake in Antarius.

BHP Billiton announced on Thursday that its board had approved expenditure of $2.2bn for its share of the development of the Mad Dog Phase 2 project in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company holds a 23.9% participating interest in the Mad Dog field.

BP, the operator, holds a 60.5% participating interest, and Union Oil Company of California, an affiliate of Chevron, holds the remaining 15.6% participating interest.