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London stocks edged higher in early trade on Thursday as the pound lost ground amid concerns about Brexit, ahead of speeches by Bank of England policymakers Ian McCafferty and Andy Haldane.
At 0830 BST, the FTSE 100 was up 0.3% to 7,492.04, while the pound fell 0.5% against the dollar and the euro to 1.3184 and 1.1211, respectively.
Spreadex analyst Connor Campbell said: “After a brief respite on Wednesday, thanks to that better than forecast UK services PMI, sterling has resumed its October slide this Thursday.
“While there was nothing concrete driving the pound lower, there was plenty of news to chip away at the currency’s confidence. There were the lingering effects of Standard & Poor’s comment yesterday stating that it is ‘sceptical’ of a Bank of England rate hike. Keeping with the BoE, deputy governor Sam Woods argued that a transition deal with the EU would need to be in place before Christmas to prevent an exodus of City jobs out of the UK.”
On top of all this Brexit concerns still weighed, Campbell said, so it was “not hard to see why sterling is continuing to given back chunk after chunk of September’s surge”.
There are no UK data releases of note due on Thursday but the Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, will make a speech at 1830 BST at the Economic Research Council and Ian McCafferty will give a speech at the Founders’ Company Annual Lecture at 1700 BST.
In corporate news, Aviva nudged up after saying it has agreed to buy a majority shareholding in low cost investment service Wealthify Group for an undisclosed sum.
Budget airline easyJet flew higher as it reported an 11% jump in passenger numbers for September as the load factor ticked up.
Medical products group BTG edged up after saying it grew sales at double-digits at constant exchange rates in the first half of the year and confirming it was on track for the full year, while also announcing it has acquired a cardiovascular catheters business.
Vodafone gained as it announced a “significant evolution” of its brand positioning strategy, strapline and visual identity – the first changes to one of the world’s best-known brands since the introduction of the ‘Power to you’ strapline in 2009.
RBS was boosted by an upgrade to ‘outperform’ from ‘neutral’ at Exane BNP Paribas while Mediclinic gained on an upgrade to ‘neutral’ from ‘sell’ at Goldman Sachs.
LondonMetric traded higher after Kempen lifted the stock to ‘neutral’ and bumped its price target up to 175p from 145p, but Ladbrokes Coral was hit by a downgrade to ‘hold’ at Goodbody Stockbrokers.
Balfour Beatty slipped after saying it was selling its US unit Heery to CBRE Group for $57m (£42m) to allow it to expand operations in the region.
Ukrainian iron ore specialist Ferrexpo was in the red after reporting a drop in pellet production for the third quarter due to its ongoing pellet line maintenance programme.
WPP, Next, Aviva, British Land, Balfour Beatty, Hays, DS Smith and AA were all ex-dividend on Thursday.
