London pre-open: Stocks seen touch higher as investors digest Manchester Arena attack

London stocks were set to open just a touch higher as investors digested news of a suspected terror attack at a concert in Manchester on Monday evening that has left 22 people dead and more than 50 injured.

The FTSE 100 was expected to open eight points higher at 7,504.

Greater Manchester Police said the explosion at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena was being treated as a terrorist incident until they have further information. General election campaigning has been suspended in light of the attack and a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee was due to take place on Tuesday morning.

On the data front, public sector net borrowing is at 0830 BST and the CBI distributive trades survey is at 1000 BST.

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "Today’s UK public finances for April are expected to show a deficit of £8.8bn for April, as we start a new tax year, and up from the £5.1bn seen in March. This year’s numbers will be particularly important given that last year’s full year deficit was £52bn, considerably better than was expected at the end of last year.

"This outperformance was mainly down to the fact that the performance of the UK economy since last year’s Brexit vote confounded almost everyone’s direst expectations. The concern now of course is that the pain has been merely deferred and has already started to seep through by way of lower VAT receipts, as inflation crimps consumer spending power."

In corporate news, healthcare investor Syncona said its portfolio company Blue Earth Diagnostics had received confirmation of approval of its Axumin radioactive diagnostic agent to detect prostrate cancer by the European Commission.

Severn Trent declared another chunky dividend and said it planned an enhanced payout next time after spying further efficiencies it can make for the year ahead.

In the year to end-March, the water supplier increased turnover 3.7% to £1.8bn, underlying profit before interest and tax by 4.3% to £525m and underlying earnings per share by 19.9% to 122.4p. It proposed a final dividend of 48.90p that takes the annual payout to 81.50p, up 1% on the previous year.

Specialist lender and banking group, the Paragon Group of Companies, announced its half year results for the six months to 31 March on Tuesday, with underlying profit increasing 1.0% to £70.1m, as the company absorbed £5.5m of Tier 2 bond costs.

The FTSE 250 firm made a statutory profit before tax of £69.4m, which was down 0.1% year-on-year.