UK Stocks-Factors to watch on Feb. 2

Feb 2 (Reuters) - Britain's FTSE 100 .FTSE index is seen opening 9 point lower at 7,481.7 on Friday, according to financial bookmakers.

* ASTRAZENECA: Array BioPharma Inc ARRY.O on Thursday sued AstraZeneca AZN.L , accusing the pharmaceutical company of refusing to pay required royalties for a cancer drug after entering into an $8.5 billion collaboration with Merck (NS: MERK ) & Co MRK.N . PROVIDENT FINANCIAL: British lender Provident Financial Plc PFG.L will appoint its interim executive chairman, Malcolm Le May, as the company's new chief executive, Sky News reported on Thursday. IWG: Canadian private equity firm Onex Corp ONEX.TO and Brookfield Asset Management BAMa.TO said on Thursday they do not intend to make an offer for IWG Plc IWG.L , sending shares of the British serviced office provider down more than 20 percent. BRITAIN INTEREST RATE: After waiting for over 10 years for a Bank of England (BoE) interest rate increase, investors are increasingly expecting another one to come along soon. OIL: Oil rose for a third day on Friday after a survey showed strong compliance with output cuts by OPEC and others including Russia, offsetting concerns about surging U.S. production. GOLD: Gold prices edged down on Friday ahead of U.S. jobs data later in the day, with traders looking for any implications for the outlook for U.S. monetary policy over the rest of the year. The UK blue chip index fell 0.6 percent to a six-week low on Thursday, after Vodafone (LON: VOD ) posted a disappointing trading update and dragged British shares into a third day of losses as outsourcing firms failed to recover after Capita's profit warning during the previous session. For more on the factors affecting European stocks, please click on: cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets