London pre-open: Stocks seen touch lower as focus shifts to banks

Stocks in London were set to open a touch weaker on Wednesday, with banks in focus following the results of the latest Bank of England stress tests.

The FTSE 100 was called to open six points lower than Tuesday’s close at 6,766.

Investors will also be digesting the latest survey from market research firm GfK, which showed UK consumer and business confidence fell further in November amid worries about the impact of the Brexit vote.

GfK’s long-running consumer confidence index fell five points to -8, missing expectations of a decline to -4.

Joe Staton, head of Market Dynamics at GfK, said: “The slump across the board this month points to continuing uncertainty about the state of the economy among consumers. Although scores for our personal financial situation just about remain positive, the big theme is the reduced confidence in the UK economy looking back and ahead. We are viewing our economy over the past 12 months with increasing despondency. The decreasing score on the economy for the next 12 months also shows we are resolutely gloomy about the outlook despite strong GDP numbers.”

Market participants will also be keeping a close eye on oil prices as the OPEC meeting gets underway in Vienna later on Wednesday.

There are no major UK data releases due, but in the US, the ADP employment report is at 1315 GMT, while the Chicago PMI is at 1445 GMT and pending home sales are at 1500 GMT.

With the worst performance of the high street banks in the 2016 UK stress tests, Royal Bank of Scotland has been forced to submit plans to raise fresh capital, while rivals Barclays and Standard Chartered failed requirements but will not require extra funds.

State-owned RBS failed to pass all the hurdles of the stress test and has agreed a revised capital plan with the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority to raise at least £2bn of extra capital.

Vodafone and Singapore's StarHub have renewed their partnership for a further three years, to provide mobile connectivity in the region.

For the last five years the partnership focused on delivering communication services for multinational corporations in Singapore.