| London stocks edged higher in early trade in what was shaping up to be a fairly busy day in terms of news flow as we head into the long Easter weekend. At 0820 BST, the FTSE 100 was up 0.2% to 7,059.23, while the pound was down 0.1% versus the euro and the dollar at 1.1422 and 1.4057, respectively. Lee Wild, head of equity strategy at Interactive Investor, said: "The FTSE 100 has recouped some if its recent losses this week, but the index really has just scratched the surface and remains more than 10% down from January’s record high, and still firmly in correction territory." Wild also pointed out that Thursday is the deadline for acceptances for turnaround specialist Melrose Industries’ hostile bid for engineer GKN - a saga that has been rumbling on since January. "GKN has used everything in its arsenal to fight off turnaround specialist Melrose, but it’s still far from clear whether it will be enough. What is certain is that this will go to the wire. It may even be that the result is not publicly announced until after the market close, forcing investors to wait over the Easter holiday before being able to act on the outcome. A GKN victory is widely tipped to trigger selling of its shares, as Melrose backers bet that benefits take far longer to feed through than they would have done had the bidder won." On the data front, net lending to individuals, fourth-quarter GDP, consumer credit, mortgage approvals and total business investment are all due at 0830 BST. The final iteration of Q4 GDP is expected to show that the UK economy grew at 0.4% on a quarterly basis, rising to 1.4% on an annualised basis, with services once again contributing most to the headline number. Meanwhile, business investment is expected to remain unchanged at 2.1% year on year. Before that, investors were digesting the latest surveys from GfK and mortgage lender Nationwide. According to Gfk, the UK consumer is feeling slightly more confident about personal finances and the general economic situation as recent improvements in wage growth and inflation boost spirits. The long-running consumer confidence index from GfK climbed three points over the month of March but still remained negative at -7, worse than at this stage last year. However, all five of the constituent measures improved in March compared to February and January. "Spring is in the air," said GfK's Joe Staton, pointing to improvements in consumers' views on personal finances, the general economy over the last year and next year, and on current major purchase intentions. Meanwhile, the latest Nationwide survey showed that house price growth unexpectedly slowed in March. Prices were up 2.1% on the year, slowing down from a 2.2% increase in February and below the 2.6% gain expected by economists. On the month, house prices fell 0.2% and although this was better than the 0.4% decline seen the month before, analysts had been expecting a 0.2% increase. London was the worst-performing region again, with average house prices down 1% compared with a year ago. Nationwide’s chief economist, Robert Gardner, said: “On the surface, the relatively subdued pace of house price growth appears at odds with recent healthy rates of employment growth, a modest pick-up in wage growth and historically low borrowing costs. However, consumer confidence has remained subdued, due to the ongoing squeeze on household finances as wage growth continues to lag behind increases in the cost of living.” Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said higher mortgage rates are starting to take their toll. “The recent jump in banks’ funding costs, triggered partly because the Term Funding Scheme no longer is subsidising new lending, points to five-year fixed mortgage rates rising by about 50 basis points over the next six months, greatly exceeding the 8bp increase seen since September.” In corporate news, NEX Group was a touch lower after agreeing to be taken over by CME Group for 1,000p per share in cash and shares of the Chicago exchange giant. CME will pay 500p in cash and 0.0444 new shares for each NEX share, which values NEX at £3.9bn, based on the closing price of CME stock overnight of $158.84. Nex shares had surged late on Wednesday amid reports of a deal. Shire was in the red after saying it has gained regulatory acceptances from the EU and Canada for its lanadelumab treatment for hereditary angioedema. Shares in the company rallied sharply earlier in the week as it emerged that Japan’s Takeda was considering making an offer for the group. Elsewhere, Compass Group was on the back foot as French peer Sodexo cut its full-year sales guidance. Moneysupermarket gained ground as it agreed to buy home communications and mobile phone comparison business Decision Tech for £40m. Qinetiq was up as its pre-close trading statement met expectations, while Renewi edged higher as it announced the sale of its non-core Westcott Park anaerobic digestion facility and IP Group gained on the back of its full-year numbers. Indivior was in the black after as it said its subsidiary Indivior UK and C4X Discovery Holdings have entered into a license agreement whereby Indivior UK obtained exclusive global rights to develop and commercialize C4X's oral orexin-1 receptor antagonist programme. In broker note action, Morrisons was upgraded to ‘outperform’ at Bernstein, while WH Smith was lifted to ‘buy’ at Stifel. Citi upgraded Cineworld to ‘buy’ and Peel Hunt bumped Electrocomponents up to ‘add’. SIG was raised to ‘equalweight’ at Barclays. However, Ted Baker was downgraded to ‘hold’ by Jefferies and Provident Financial was hit by a downgrade to ‘sell’ at Berenberg. InterContinental Hotels, 888 Holdings, Bovis Homes, British Land, CLS Holdings, Prudential, Sanne, Ferrexpo and Softcat were among the companies whose stock went ex-dividend on Thursday. | 
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