London pre-open: Stocks to edge higher ahead of US data, Fed speakers

Equity markets in Europe were expected to move higher at the start of trading on the back of overnight gains in the Asian trading session, as investors digest the potential implications of the dovish US Federal Reserve Beige book published on Wednesday night.

Footsie is expected to begin the session up to 32 points higher from Wednesday's closing value of 6,269.61.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange's Composite Index finished with a gain of 1.76% to 3,319.94

The Beige Book, a compendium of anecdotal reports on the state of the US economy put together by the Fed's regional branches, seemed to cast some doubt on the likelihood of an interest rate increase before the current year was out.

"The Fed has remained resilient until now and continued to stress that this remains a transitory period but the markets are not buying it and we continue to see weak data. We need to see a turnaround in the next couple of months or the Fed will inevitably be backed into the corner. Already Fed Funds futures are pricing in only at 32% chance of a rate hike this year so either the Fed needs to get on board with this or start communicating much better," said craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda.

Acting as a backdrop, a raft of US data and Fed speakers were scheduled for later in the day.

Among the former were included the latest figures for US consumer prices in the month of September. The Federal Reserve bank of Philadelphia's manufacturing sector gauge for October was due to published later that same day.

Sales at Burberry slow in second quarter

Burberry has moved to cut costs after sales slowed in the second quarter as the luxury market, particularly for Chinese customers, became "increasingly challenging". Total sales were almost flat at £1.1bn in the six months to 30 September, with retail sales up 3% to £774m at the reported level and 2% underlying, but wholesale down 3% and licensing down 18% at the underlying level.

Tesco is selling 14 of its Spenhill development sites across London, the South East and Bath for £250m. The FTSE 100 company announced on Thursday it is selling them to a fund and clients advised by Meyer Bergman. The sites are suitable for mixed-use and residential development, with 11 sites already sold and the remaining three transactions still to be finalised. The deal will help Tesco's strategic priority to protect and strengthen its balance sheet.

Unilever posted a jump in revenue in the third quarter and said it now expects underlying sales growth for the year to be towards the top end of its target range. Turnover increased by 9.4% to $13.4bn, including a positive currency impact of 2.9%, while underlying sales growth was 5.7%. The company said growth was helped by some specific factors such as a soft comparator in China, strong ice cream sales and some advanced sales in Latin America.