Futures for the leading stock indexes were essentially flat this morning, ahead of Wednesday’s bell. The market was unchanged in the wake of data which showed that housing starts fell 8.5% in January, a bigger drop than had been expected.
Falling in premarket trades are shares of Life Technologies (LIFE), down about 5% after Reuters reported that the chances of a sale of the firm have fallen dramatically.
Thermo Fisher�[Scientific]�(TMO), the world’s largest maker of laboratory equipment and scientific instruments, had held discussions with Life Technologies but is no longer actively pursuing a deal, as a big run-up in Life Tech’s shares made the economics of a transaction less attractive, one of the people said.
Thermo Fisher’s stock is down nearly 3%.
On the rise are shares of Boeing (BA), gaining about 1.4%. There were two pieces of potentially good news this morning, one (another) Reuters scoop about a possible fix for the battery problems on the 787 Dreamliner planes:
“The gaps between cells will be bigger. I think that’s why there was overheating,” said the source, who declined to be identified because the plans are private.
The other piece of news was word that 15,5000 engineers have accepted a labor deal with Boeing, though more than 7,000 technical workers rejected the same offer.
Among other movers this morning are shares of Millenial Media (MM), down 27% afterits sales forecast fell below Wall Street expectations. BP‘s (BP) stock is down 0.5% despite news that it managed to negotiated a $3.4 billion cut in the damages it has to pay in relation to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
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