London pre-open: Stocks to kick week off on back foot

London stocks were set for a weaker open on Monday following an uninspiring Asian session.

The FTSE 100 was expected to open 15 points lower at 7,545.

There are no major UK data releases due, so market participants will likely eye the release of the eurozone services PMI.

David Madden at CMC Markets said: “Today, Spain, Italy, France and Germany will reveal the final reading of the services PMI reports. Keep in mind that manufacturing figures from the eurozone were robust last week. The single currency has been weakened by the European Central Bank (ECB) as they have left the door open to a round of quantitative easing.”

In corporate news, challenger bank Aldermore reported 12% growth in net loans in the third quarter, in which it received and recommended a bid from South Africa's First Rand bank.

Aldermore lent £8.4bn in the quarter, up from £7.5bn in the same quarter last year, driven by £2.4bn of new lending and with net interest margin remaining unchanged from the first half of the year at 3.5%

Plastics maker Synthomer said volumes of sales in the third quarter remained flat on last year and that it continued to hunt for acquisition opportunities.

Targets for the full year 2017 were unchanged from the interim results in August, underpinned by resilient trading in Europe and the Asian Nitrile market continuing to evolve in line with our expectations.

EasyJet passenger numbers rose 9.9% in October as the load factor ticked higher.

Traffic at the budget airline increased to 7.5m last month from 6.8m in October 2016, as the load factor - which gauges how the full the planes are - edged up to 92.5% from 90.2%.

On a rolling annual basis, traffic was up 10% to 80.9m as the load factor rose to 92.8% from 91.3%.