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LONDON (Alliance News) - UK stocks opened lower Wednesday, giving up some of the gains they made during the past two sessions, with Hikma Pharmaceuticals bucking the trend after receiving a letter from the US Food and Drug Administration closing out a previous warning letter it had received from the regulator.
Hikma said the letter closes out the warning letter is received from the FDA in October 2014 regarding its injectables manufacturing plant in Portugal.
The company said the FDA has accepted the remedial actions it took to fix the problems at the manufacturing plant, which had centred on environmental monitoring issues. Hikma was the best blue-chip performer up 3.8%.
The FTSE 100 index read down 0.5% at 6,239.37, and the FTSE 250 was down 0.3% at 17,029.28. The AIM All-Share was up 0.1% at 729.34.
European equities also got off to a lower start, with the CAC 40 in Paris down 0.7% and the DAX 30 in Frankfurt down 0.4%.
In Asia, the Japanese Nikkei 225 index closed up 0.1%, the Shanghai Composite closed down 1.0% and the Hang Seng ended down 0.3%.
Elsewhere in the London market, UK Mail Group was the worst performer in the FTSE AllShare, down 16%. The company said the time it will take to resolve the problems in its Parcels business will hit its outlook for its next financial year, though it affirmed is guidance for the current year despite pretax profit for the first half plunging due to higher costs and one-offs.
UK Mail said the longer-than-expected timescale for resolving the operational issues in its Parcels network and the consequential impact this will have on its earnings both in its 2016 and 2017 financial years and have forced its outlook for the year to March 2017 to be "softened slightly".
Soco International was another heavy faller, down 16%, even though the group firmed up its full-year production guidance, as it said it has been boosted by the earlier start-up of the H5 wellhead platform at the Te Giac Trang field in Vietnam.
Soco said its production for the ten months to the end of October was 12,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. It has revised up its production guidance for 2015 to 11,800-12,000 boepd, up from 11,000-12,000 previously.
However, current production from the H5 platform, at around 9,000 barrels, is slightly below expectations, the company said.
Oil services company Hunting was amongst the best performers in the FTSE 250, up 2.8% after Goldman Sachs added it to its Conviction Buy list. The bank also upgraded Kaz Minerals to Neutral from Sell. The copper miner traded up 1.3%.
On AIM, Ariana Resources said it has secured the mining permit for the Kizilcukur gold and silver project in Turkey. The project is closed outside the company's existing Red Rabbit project in the country. The mining licence will run to September 2022, with drilling now complete and sampling ongoing. The company's shares were up 5.9%.
In the economic calendar, eurozone construction data for September is at 1000 GMT. In the afternoon, the Mortgage Bankers Association releases its weekly US MBA mortgage applications reading at 1200 GMT, with US building permits and housing starts data for October due at 1330 GMT.
Investors will also be keeping a close eye on speeches by Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart and Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley at 1300 GMT.
After the close of the UK equity market, the minutes of the FOMC's October meeting are released at 1900 GMT. Japanese trade data is scheduled for 2350 GMT.
By Neil Thakrar; neilthakrar@alliancenews.com; @NeilThakrar1
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