London pre-open: Stocks seen lower; Brexit in focus
By Michele Maatouk
Date: Thursday 03 Dec 2020
(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to fall at the open on Thursday following solid gains in the previous session, amid concerns about Brexit.
The FTSE 100 was called to open 30 points lower at 6,433.
CMC Markets analyst David Madden said: "Sterling suffered yesterday as dealers' patience took a knock seeing as there is increased frustration with respect to the UK-EU trade talks.
"The UK's fishing territory is at the forefront of the discussions. The lower move in the pound represented the concerns about striking a deal on time, but the CMC GBP index dropped its lowest level in over two weeks, which doesn't really suggest that traders feel a no-deal scenario is on the cards."
In corporate news, Sainsbury's became the latest supermarket to bow to pressure and repay more than £400m in business rates relief received from the government to help cope with the coronavirus pandemic.
Rivals Tesco and Morrison on Wednesday said they would repay more than £850m as demands grew for the money to be returned in light of booming profits and dividend payments from supermarkets.
Phoenix Holdings said it beat its target for cash generation in 2020 as the closed life insurance company pledged to be carbon neutral by 2025 and to make its investments carbon neutral by 2050.
The FTSE 100 group generated £1.71bn of cash in 2020 compared with £707m in 2019. This year's total was more than the upper end of its target of £1.5bn to £1.6bn.
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