Greene King Share News (GNK)

LONDON (Alliance News) - Stocks in London are set to open marginally higher on Friday, though investors remain concerned about negative economic and political news, ahead of the key US nonfarm payrolls report later in the day.IG says futures indicate the FTSE 100 index to open 14.34 points higher at 7,333.30 on Friday. The index of London large-caps closed down 0.9% at 7,318.96 on Thursday.Sterling was quoted at USD1.2937 early Friday, unchanged from USD1.2934 at the London equities close on Thursday.In UK early company news, FTSE 100-listed pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said the US Food & Drug Administration has granted its Breakthrough Therapy Designation for tezepelumab, a medicine used for the treatment of asthma.The designation award was based on the Phase IIb PATHWAY trial data which showed a significant reduction in the annual asthma excacerbation rate compared with placebo in a broad population of severe asthma patients.In the FTSE 250 index, emerging markets-focused asset manager Ashmore Group reported pretax profit of GBP191.3 million, down from GBP206.2 million the year before, due to higher costs, particularly in personnel expenses.This was in spite of net revenue growth of 7.0% to GBP276.3 million from GBP257.6 million, as well as assets under management seeing a double-digit rise of 26% to USD73.9 billion from USD58.7 billion.Pub and restaurant operator Greene King said it saw a strong start in the first 18 weeks of its current financial year, as like-for-like sales in its Pub Company segment for the period ended September 2 were up by 2.8%.This was due to a positive weather effect as well as the World Cup bringing out fans to the pub. Meanwhile, like-for-like net profit in the Pub Partners division was down 0.4%, hit by the timing of higher overhead costs, but is expected to balance out over the year ending April 30, 2019. "It's been a difficult week for European markets with the DAX and FTSE 100 both hitting multi-month lows this week as investors continued to lose confidence in the economic growth and earnings story, on a combination of rising risks surrounding further trade tariffs as well as turmoil in emerging markets," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.According to BDO LLP, UK high street sales fell by 2.7% year-on-year - the worst August decline for three years, BDO's high street sales tracker said.The report also said it was one of the worst Augusts seen since records started in 2006.The fashion sector saw its worst August since 2015, with sales down in-store in every week of August. Homeware stores saw sales growth plummet by 6.1% year-on-year in August - the worst August for homeware since 2012.The economic events calendar on Friday has French industrial production at 0745 BST, with the trade balance, exports and imports due at the same time. In the UK are Halifax house prices at 0830 BST and consumer inflation expectations at 0930 BST.Eurozone second quarter GDP is due at 1000 BST.Headlining the economic calendar are nonfarm payrolls from the US at 1330 BST, with the unemployment rate and average hourly earnings all due at the same time.In the US on Thursday, Wall Street ended lower, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average ending up 0.1%, the S&P 500 down 0.4% and Nasdaq Composite closing 0.9% lower."Today's payrolls number is expected to show an improvement on the disappointing 157,000 headline number we saw in July, which again would appear to show that the amount of new jobs is starting to become scarcer. Expectations are for 198,000 new jobs for August with the unemployment rate set to fall further from 3.9% to 3.8%," Hewson added.In Asia on Friday, the Japanese Nikkei 225 index closed down 0.8%. In China, the Shanghai Composite is up 0.1%, while the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong is down 0.4%.