London pre-open: FTSE to fall ahead of European summit

City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open down 63 points from yesterday's close of 5,403, tracking Asian stocks lower as hopes of action from a meeting of European leaders being held later today fade. The drop puts an end to what had been a strong start to the week. UK banking titan Barclays has announced the pricing details of the open offer part of its recently announced sale of its stake in US wealth management giant Blackrock. Barclays has agreed to sell 26.2m shares of Blackrock in an underwritten public offering at a price of $160 a share. In addition, as previously announced, Blackrock will repurchase 6.4m Blackrock shares from Barclays at $156.80 per share, for an aggregate purchase amount of $1.0bn.International engineering company AMEC announced it was in discussions to buy Serco's nuclear Technical Consulting Services (TCS) business. TCS works primarily with the UK civil and defence nuclear markets and has annual revenues of around £70m. The deal was confirmed in a separate announcement by FTSE 100 Serco, although neither firm revealed how much the deal might be worth.Iconic British luxury brand Burberry reported profits broadly in line with expectations in the year ended March 31st. Adjusted profit before tax (which excludes restructuring costs and other items) increased by 26% from £298m to £376m, slightly ahead of the £374.7m estimate. Meanwhile, the retail/wholesale operating margin improved by 80 basis points to 16.4%. Revenue figures for the second half were already disclosed in the pre-close trading update last month and so won't come as much surprise to the market.