London pre-open: Stocks seen muted as EU rescue fund talks continue
London stocks were on course for a muted open on Monday as talks over an EU coronavirus rescue fund were set to continue.
The FTSE 100 was called to open eight points lower at 6,282, with EU leaders due to resume talks about a €750mln rescue package later in the day amid divisions over the split between loans and grants.
CMC Markets analyst David Madden said: "The sooner the bloc can agree on the terms of the rescue the better for everyone, especially countries like Spain and Italy, which were hard hit by the health crisis, and are rely heavily on tourism."
In corporate news, GlaxoSmithKline said it would invest £130m in a collaboration with CureVac to develop and make up to five mRNA-based vaccines and monoclonal antibodies targeting infectious disease pathogens.
The deal includes £104m in cash upfront and a one-time reimbursable payment of £26m for manufacturing capacity reservation, upon certification of CureVac's commercial scale manufacturing facility currently under construction in Germany.
CureVac will be eligible to receive development and regulatory milestone payments of up to £277m, commercial milestone payments of up to £329m and tiered royalties on product sales, GSK said.
Synairgen said clinical trials had shown that its Covid-19 treatment sharply reduced the risk of patients developing severe forms of the illness provoked by the novel coronavirus.
The company said that SNG001, an inhaled formulation of interferon beta-1, reduced the risk of becoming severely ill by 79% and that those administered the treatment were more than twice as likely to recover from Covid-19
Commenting on the news, Richard Marsden, the company's boss, said: "We are all delighted with the trial results announced today, which showed that SNG001 greatly reduced the number of hospitalised COVID-19 patients who progressed from ‘requiring oxygen’ to ‘requiring ventilation’".