London pre-open: FTSE called to open lower ahead of Fed and BoE minutes

City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open around 21 points lower than yesterday's close of 6,698.01, ahead of the release of the minutes from both the Bank of England and the latest meeting of the US Federal Reserve. The Federal Open Market Committee's meeting should offer further insight behind the Fed's decision to maintain its monetary stimulus programme. Last month the Fed said it would keep interest rates near zero and its monthly $85bn bond buying programme unchanged until the economy and jobs market improved further. The President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said on Monday that he was "getting more hopeful" about the economic recovery, citing labour market improvements and stronger-than-expected growth in the third quarter."Given that he is typically dovish, these comments have been taken by investors as a warning that the Fed will soon begin to wind down its asset purchase program," said Craig Erlam, Market Analyst at Alpari UK, yesterday.This morning he added: "It was no surprise when the Fed left policy unchanged last month, but investors will be looking for hints about when policy makers intend to taper. If there is still a lot of support for tapering this year, it could lead to a December taper being heavily priced in, especially if this is paired with data that suggests the economy was unaffected by the shutdown." Elsewhere, Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser said the Fed should set a fixed dollar amount on its monetary easing and end bond purchases when that amount is reached."We cannot continue to play this bond-buying game by ear and risk the Fed's credibility while creating lingering uncertainty about the course of monetary policy," he said in a speech before the Risk Management Association in Philadelphia.Many economists expect the Fed to announce a tapering of quantitative easing to $70bn a month in March, although uncertainty remains.Today's agenda will also be jam packed with economic data with the release of US retail sales, manufacturing inventories and mortgage applications. Back on this side of the Pond, the Bank of England will release minutes of its interest rate decision. The central bank last month announced it would keep interest rates at 0.5% and asset purchases at £375bn. Investors will today be looking to see if the BoE has shown any signs that policy makers favour a new unemployment threshold. In company news, infrastructure investor HICL Infrastructure said net asset value rose 3.2p per share for the first half of its financial year and said the pipeline of potential new investment opportunities under evaluation remains promising. NAV per share, post-interim dividend, rose to 119.6p from 116.4p at March 31st.GlaxoSmithKline has completed the partial sale of Aspen Pharmacare, the drug company announced this morning. The group has disposed 28.2m ordinary shares in Aspen at a price of 250 South African Rand (ZAR) per share, raising gross proceeds of 7,059 ZAR.Utilities reseller Telecom Plus has completed an acquisition of Npower's gas and electricity supply businesses that catapults it into big league of UK utilities. The FTSE 250 company, which operates via the Utility Warehouse brand and uses customers as distributors, has agreed a price of £218m, which it will fund via a share placing and new debt.NR