London pre-open: Stocks to rise as focus remains on Ukraine crisis
London stocks were set to rise at the open on Wednesday as all eyes remain firmly on the Russia-Ukraine war and surging oil and gas prices.
The FTSE 100 was called to open 84 points higher at 7,050.
CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "European markets underwent a rather choppy session yesterday, clawing their way back from the lows to finish more or less unchanged on a report that the EU was said to be mulling the idea of issuing joint bonds in respect of energy and defence spending. This would be to reduce its dependence on Russian energy, as well as lessen its reliance on NATO when it comes to safeguarding its security.
"As straw clutching goes it was quite a leap, but such is the fickle nature of sentiment, the prospect of a new stimulus plan in the wake of all this volatility was seen as a welcome development, albeit with the enormous caveat that, as with anything EU related, the devil would be in the detail. In any case the report was quite quickly played down by the EU Commission’s vice President and European Green New deal head Frans Timmermans."
In corporate news, Asia-focused insurer Prudential reported a rise in annual operating profit driven by new business amid the Covid pandemic.
Adjusted operating profit increased 16% to $3.23bn and beat the consensus of $3.19bn.
New business levels in Hong Kong, its Asia headquarters, continued to face pressure from the extended mainland China border closure, the company said.
Russia-focussed gold miner Petropavlovsk said that its operations were currently carrying on without interruption despite the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Petropavlovsk said no members of the group had been named in sanctions against Russia announced by the United Kingdom, United States, European Union and other nations and that "appropriate systems and procedures" had been put in place to verify that it was not conducting restricted forms of business with any sanctioned parties.
However, the FTSE 250-listed firm did caution that "significant risk" was posed by the potential disruption to its supply chain despite management initiating contingency planning on day one of the crisis to mitigate risk and ensure that operations continued uninterrupted.