London pre-open: Stocks seen higher ahead of retail sales, ECB announcement

London stocks were set for a firmer open on Thursday, tracking a positive session in Asia as investors eye UK retail sales data and a rate announcement from the European Central Bank.

The FTSE 100 was expected to open 10 points higher at 7,441.

UK retail sales are due at 0930 BST, while the latest policy announcement from the ECB is at 1245 BST.

Oanda analyst Craig Erlam said: "While we’re not expecting any changes from the ECB today, its €60 billion a month asset program expires at the end of the year and traders are looking for clues regarding what comes next. An announcement on this is unlikely until September when it releases its new macro-economic projections but Mario Draghi may offer some insight into what we can expect during the press conference.

"The most likely decision, despite the central bank still falling well short of its inflation target, will be to cut its purchases by another €20 billion as it did in April and extend by another six months. There has been a lot of speculation about a more explicit phasing out but I think the ECB want to be more careful given the fragile nature of the recovery. The result will likely be the same though with the central bank ending its quantitative easing program either at the end of 2018 or early 2019."

In corporate news, international distribution and outsourcing group Bunzl said it has made a binding offer to buy a group of businesses in France and has also bought a marketing services business in the UK for undisclosed sums.

Low cost carrier easyJet reported “strong” trading and operational performance in its third quarter on Thursday, as passengers carried increased 10.8% to 22.3 million, which the board said was driven by a 9.4% improvement in capacity to 24 million seats, with load factor up 1.1 percentage points to 93.1%.

The airline also confirmed the award of its European Air Operator Certificate in Austria, which it had applied for in a bid to ensure it could maintain the freedom to fly in the EU post-Brexit.

First-half earnings from Unilever came in stronger than expectations and the consumer goods colossus increased its guidance for full year profit margins.

Although sales growth slowed to 4.9% in the second quarter, turnover rose 5.5% to €14.4bn in the first six months of the year, with underlying sales growth of 3.4% excluding the spreads business and underlying earnings per share up 14.4% to €1.13.