London pre-open: Stocks seen lower after Republicans pull 'plan B' vote

21st Dec 2012 07:33

The FTSE 100 is expected to decline in early trading on Friday due to ongoing concerns about the 'fiscal cliff', after House Speaker John Boehner last night cancelled a planned vote on a back-up tax-cut plan after failing to receive enough support by his own party.Market analyst Michael Hewson from CMC Markets said: "It's one thing when Republicans can't agree with Democrats on tax rises andspending cuts with respect to the on-going saga of the fiscal cliff negotiations, but quite another when Republicans can't even agree amongst themselves as House leader John Boehner's much trumpeted plan B went the way of the fairies as Republicans couldn't even agree amongst themselves about what form plan B would take, and as such the vote on it was pulled."This lack of agreement pretty much guarantees that any solution is likely to push beyond the January deadline and increase market uncertainty at a time when volumes will be a lot lighter than usual," Hewson said.City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open down 21 points from yesterday's close of 5,958. Stocks to watch  Xstrata is set to boost ore production by a further third at its Lady Loretta mine in north-west Queensland, Australia. The greenfield underground zinc-lead-silver mine began ore production ahead of schedule in September and commercial-scale mining is due to commence in mid-2013.Regus has launched a fresh bid for serviced office provider MWB Business Exchange (MBE) at a much lower price, a year and a half after it withdrew its initial offer. Through its subsidiary Marley Acquisitions Limited (MAL), Regus is making a cash offer for 61.576p per share of MBE, valuing the company at £40m. This is an all-cash premium of 19.57% to MBE's closing price of 51.5p on December 19th.Financial services firm Randall & Quilter Investment Holdings has completed the acquisition of the entire issued share capital of LINPAC Insurance Company Limited (LICL) from the owner LINPAC Finance Limited. LICL, which is a Guernsey-domiciled captive insurer, has been in run-off since 2006 and wrote business from 1994. The insurer's reserves were worth approximately £171,000 as of June 30th, the date of the latest available management accounts. BC