London pre-open: Stocks seen flat ahead of Bank Holiday

London stocks were set for a flat open on Friday following mixed cues from the US and Asia, with volumes likely to be lighter than usual as we head into the Bank Holiday weekend.

The FTSE 100 was expected to open unchanged at 7,517.

Meanwhile, oil prices were weaker but off earlier lows, despite an agreement at the Opec meeting in Vienna to extend the 1.8m barrel-a-day production cut by a further nine months. West Texas Intermediate was off 0.7% to $48.56 while Brent crude was 0.5% lower at $51.18.

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said; "The rise in oil prices that we’d seen this month in the lead up to this week’s OPEC meeting came to an abrupt and shuddering halt yesterday in the wake of the expected announcement that members, as well as non OPEC members, had agreed to extend the cuts agreed in November last year for another 9 months, until March 2018.

"The resultant market sell-off shouldn’t really have been too much of a surprise given that having delivered on expectations, markets didn’t really have anywhere else to go."

There are no major UK data releases due but in the US, first-quarter GDP is at 1330 BST. "Today’s latest US Q1 GDP revision is expected to show a slight improvement from the unexpectedly weak 0.7% reading a few weeks ago, however it is still only expected to nudge up to 0.9%, and even that might be a stretch, due to weak consumer spending," Hewson said.

In corporate news, first quarter sales from The Restaurant Group have improved significantly from the end of last year, but are still in decline.

For the 20 weeks from the end of January, like-for-like sales across chains including Frankie & Benny's, Garfunkel's and Joe's Kitchen fell 1.8%, with total sales decreasing 1.5%. This compares to the 3.9% LFL drop last year and 5.9% collapse in the fourth quarter.

Total quality assurance provider Intertek Group released a trading update for the period from 1 January to 30 April on Friday.

The FTSE 100 company reported group revenue of £883.5m, up 14.2% at actual rates and 1.8% at constant rates, with “solid” organic revenue growth at constant rates, with products revenue up 5.8%, trade rising 5.0%, and resources falling 15.4%. It claimed “good” performance of acquisitions in sectors with “attractive” growth and margin prospects, and described “operational discipline” on cost and margin management during the period.