Barclays Share News (BARC)

The FTSE 100 is expected to start the session between 5 to 12 points lower from Tuesday's close of 6,753.80 points.That follows a flat close on Wall Street overnight. The Dow Jones Industrials finished in negative territory for the year as the Dow Jones Transports closed at year-to-date lows, weighed down by losses in the airlines sector.Industrial production figures are due out in the UK, France and Italy.However, in Britain traders will likely be waiting on the Chancellor's Mansion House speech.George Osborne is expected to signal an end to the government's £3.5bn-a-year bank levy, amid worries that HSBC might be tempted to move its headquarters abroad.Osborne is also seen telling the City's grandees they can expect to see budget surpluses almost every year going forward.Nonetheless, "Greek uncertainty is still very apparent in the markets and is likely to continue to weigh on investor sentiment. There are signs of occasional progress but there is very much a case of two steps forwards and one step back about this process," writes Oanda's senior market analyst Craig Erlam."Alexis Tsipras yesterday called on his Syriza party to rally behind the government as it tries to secure a cash-for-reforms deal that will enable it to avoid default at the end of the month. This alone was a rather bizarre rallying cry given the speech he gave to parliament on Friday in which he slammed creditor proposals as "absurd" which is hardly going to drive support for a deal."S&P less positive on UK banksOvernight ratings agency Standard&Poor's downgraded several of Britain's largest lenders, including Deutsche Bank and Barclays.UK supermarket retailer Sainsbury posted a sixth straight quarter of falling underlying sales on Wednesday on the back of food price deflation and increased competition. The company said like-for-like retail sales for the 12 weeks to 6 June fell 2.1%, excluding fuel. The figures were better than analysts' expectations for a 2.3% decline, but worse than the 1.9% fall reported in the previous quarter.First Group saw underlying revenues increase by 4.1% in the year to 31 March, although reported revenues took a hit due to Rail franchise charges. The figures were not comparable to last year's to the sale of UK bus operations and foreign exchange translation effects.