London pre-open: Stocks seen lower ahead of OPEC, ECB announcement

London stocks were seen opening lower on Thursday following mixed leads from the US and Asia, as investors looked to the OPEC meeting and the ECB rate announcement.

The FTSE 100 was expected to open down 12 points from Wednesday’s close at 6,180.

“Events in Vienna, Austria are likely to take centre stage today as Austria’s corporate hospitality and services sector gets set for a nice boost from the corresponding meetings of OPEC and the European Central Bank,” said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.

“While the hoteliers of Vienna celebrate their good fortune the rest of the investment community will no doubt spend the day looking for clues as to what, if any new policy moves, get announced by these so called guardians of price stability in global oil and financial markets. The reality is that for all the speculation about what might come out of these meetings the end result will in all likelihood be very little. OPEC is unlikely to come up with any agreement on production freezes simply because the self-interest of Saudi Arabia and Iran won’t allow it.”

There are no major UK data releases due but the European Central Bank rate announcement is at 1245 BST. In the US, the ADP employment report is at 1315 BST while initial jobless claims are at 1330 BST.

GlaxoSmithKline has, after discussions with the US regulator, brought forward the new drug application for its daily closed triple therapy for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

GSK and its partner in the drug, Innoviva, now expect to make the US regulatory submission before the end of 2016, rather than in the first half of 2018, as previously expected.

A £141m impairment and restructuring charge hit pre-tax profits at Johnson Matthey, which fell to £386.3m from £495m in a “difficult macroeconomic environment”.

Pre-tax profits also include the benefit of the £130m profit on the sale of Research Chemicals. Basic earnings per share were 166.2p.

The board is recommending a 5% increase in the total dividend for the year, reflecting its confidence in the group's long term performance. This comprises a final dividend of 52.0p, making a total of 71.5p.

Pharmaceutical and biologics company AstraZeneca announced on Thursday that it has entered into a licensing agreement with Grünenthal GmbH for the exclusive rights to Zurampic (lesinurad) in Europe and Latin America.

The FTSE 100 firm received approval from the European Medicines Agency in February for Zurampic, for the adjunctive treatment of hyperuricemia, or excess of uric acid in the blood, in adult patients with uncontrolled gout.

Under the terms of the deal, Grünenthal will submit a fixed-dose combination programme of lesinurad and allopurinol for regulatory review, and will pay AstraZeneca up to $230m in sales and other related milestones over the lifetime of the contract.