London pre-open: Stocks to edge up amid Middle East tensions
By Michele Maatouk
Date: Friday 14 Jun 2019
(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to edge up at the open on Friday following a positive session on Wall Street, although worries about tensions in the Middle East were likely to cap gains.
The FTSE 100 was called to open 11 points higher at 7,380.
Despite the positive call, market participants were expected to be wary after the US blamed Iran for the oil tanker attacks in the Gulf of Oman.
Danske Bank said: "Stocks in the Asian session traded miscellaneously on Friday morning, while the bond rally intensified on trade war concerns putting the brakes on global economic growth and new geopolitical tensions in the Persian Gulf region after the tanker incident. The Trump administration accused Iran of the attacks on the tankers while Iranian officials denied they were behind the incident.
"US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said on Thursday in Washington that Iran had threatened earlier to restrain oil transport in the Strait of Hormuz. While Pompeo gave no evidence and did not take any questions from reporters, Trump administration officials said that at least one of the ships was attacked by mines. They showed a picture of a tanker with a hole caused by a mine that had exploded and an undetonated mine inside."
In UK corporate news, exhibitions and information company Ascential said trading was in line with full year expectations with its product design, marketing and sales divisions all reporting organic first half revenue growth.
Amigo's chief executive Glen Crawford has left due to ill health, leaving the guarantor loans company without a boss until Crawford's replacement gets regulatory approval.
Crawford has resigned with immediate effect to have surgery for a degenerative spinal condition. Hamish Paton, the former CEO of Brighthouse, is due to take over but has not yet gained approval from the Financial Conduct Authority.
Eastern Europe-focussed low cost carrier Wizz Air added a new metric to its monthly statistics - its carbon footprint per passenger - as it staked its claim to the title of 'Europe's greenest airline'.
The FTSE 250 company said that in May, it carried a total of 3.47 million passengers and totalled 5.66 billion revenue passenger kilometres. In the same month, carbon dioxide emissions totalled 319,760 tonnes, with carbon dioxide emissions per passenger kilometre being 56.5 grams.
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