London pre-open: FTSE to track Asian stocks higher

City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open up six points from Friday's close of 5,571, tracking Asian stocks higher following a round of positive data in both China and Japan. Also boosting sentiment is the progress made at the EU summit held at the end of last week, at which a number of significant steps were taken to allow the single currency region deal with the on-going economic crisis. Marcus Agius, the Chairman of UK banking group Barclays announced his resignation at the weekend, following the revelation last week that the bank had been found guilty of manipulating interbank lending rates. The bank is to pay a £290m fine to UK and US regulators after it was found attempting to control submissions for the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (EURIBOR) to benefit the bank's interest rate derivatives traders. Libor and the Euribor are benchmark reference rates that indicate the interest rate that banks charge when lending to each other. Highly acquisitive media giant WPP has agreed to acquire the South Korean media planning and buying agency, Alchemedia, which will be merged into its GroupM Korea subsidiary. Alchemedia, founded in 2004 and based in Seoul, generated revenues of 1.4bn South Korean won (£0.78m) in 2011 and had gross assets of KRW 10bn. The combined company's clients include Audi, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM and Procter & Gamble.Pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has revealed positive results from four pivotal phase III studies for its once-daily chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) treatment, LAMA/LABA. "We are very encouraged by the results of these initial studies for our LAMA/LABA, an important cornerstone of our broad respiratory development portfolio," said Darrell Baker, SVP Respiratory Portfolio Optimisation Leader at GSK.