London preopen: Stocks expected to slip on yuan devaluation

(ShareCast News) - City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open 13 points lower than Monday's close of 6,736.22.European equities are set to slip on the open following People's Bank of China moves, London Capital Group night dealer Jonathan Sudaria said. "The extreme 'one-off' devaluation in the yuan last night has concerns brewing that things really aren't ok in China and is tantamount to an admission by China's elites," Sudaria said.German and eurozone ZEW economic sentiment figures were also expected to be released on Tuesday.OANDA senior market analyst Craig Erlam said a small improvement is expected in the August readings with the boost coming from reduced Grexit concerns.Stocks to watch Just Retirement Group and Partnership Assurance Group have agreed an all-share merger deal. Just Retirement shareholders will own roughly 60% of the combined group and Partnership the remainder after its shareholders receive 0.834 Just Retirement shares for each of theirs, valuing the group at £668.5m.Bookmaker Ladbrokes posted a 44% drop in first-half pre-tax profit and cut its interim dividend as the company took a hit from impairment charges, which included the closure of some of its shops. Chief executive Jim Mullen said: "Our first half results reflect the challenge facing Ladbrokes. While we have some encouraging customer trends, we need to reset the business and invest. The results clearly show why we need to change and why we need to do so quickly."Carillion said it has been named as the preferred bidder for the Midland Metropolitan Hospital public/private partnership project which should generate more than £430m of construction and support services revenue.The company was the only bidder left in the process after Balfour Beatty withdrew from the race. Carillion said it will invest £16m of equity into the project and will spend £297m on building the hospital.In the papers China caught investors off guard by weakening its currency the most on record, sending ripples through the foreign exchange market. The People's Bank of China lowered the renminbi's daily fix to the US dollar by 1.9 per cent to 6.228, the most on record. Each morning the central bank fixes the currency at a certain point and allows the renminbi to trade as much as 2 percentage points in either direction from the mid-point. Typically the PBoC's adjustments are incremental. - The Financial TimesGoogle has announced a massive corporate overhaul that will see the internet giant separate its core business from its ambitious research divisions and owned by a new company, Alphabet. Chief executive Larry Page, who co-founded Google as a university research project two decades ago, announced the creation of Alphabet, a holding company of which Google would be one subsidiary, on Monday night. - The TelegraphWarren Buffett gave Wall Street a summer boost after the world's third richest man announced the biggest takeover deal of his long investment career with the $37 billion purchase of Precision Castparts Corp. American shares jumped after news broke of Mr Buffett's all-cash acquisition of the Oregon-based aircraft components maker. Markets were cheered both by the investor's bet on a continued economic recovery and by the suggestion that the mergers and acquisitions boom is going strong. - The Times