London pre-open: Quiet start ahead of US jobs data

After going into a late dive yesterday following the publication of the Irish banking stress tests London's leading shares are set to claw back some of those losses at the outset, though trading is likely to be low in the absence of signficant company news and ahead of this afternoon's March jobless news from the US. BP has signed four new production sharing contracts over 4,800 square kilometres of coal bed methane areas in South Kalimantan, Indonesia. The contracts were awarded to BP and its local partners by the Indonesian government. In one of the contracts, BP will have 44% ownership over the contract, while in the other three it will have 45%.The North American spending spree of British Gas owner Centrica shows no sign of abating, with the company paying C$47m (£30m) in cash to Shell Canada Energy for some natural gas assets located in the Wildcat Hills region of Alberta.The planned flotation of Bilt Paper has been put on ice for the time being following a an acquisition announcement this week by International Paper in the Indian market which Ballarpur, Bilt's owner, believes will set a benchmark for the valuation of paper companies in India and may possibly rerate the Indian paper industry. UK companies lagged behind their peers in Northern Europe in the year to 31 March, the private equity group 3i said in a trading update ahead of its full-year results. The firm said it had seen good progress across the whole business."There have, however, been marked regional differences, with strong growth in Northern Europe counterbalanced by weaker performance from UK companies," chief executive Michael Queen said.---jh