Stock futures signal higher open

LONDON (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Wednesday after strong gains on the previous day, with futures for the S&P 500, for the Dow Jones and for the Nasdaq 100 up 0.4 to 0.6 percent.

Automatic Data Processing (ADP) is set to release its March employment report at 1215 GMT (8:15 a.m. ET). Economists in a Reuters survey expect 203,000 jobs were created in March versus 217,000 new jobs in February. The figures will give an indication about Friday's widely watched nonfarm payroll numbers.

The Mortgage Bankers Association will release the Weekly Mortgage Market Index for the week ended March 25 at 1100 GMT. The mortgage market index read 524.4 and the refinancing index was 2,471.2 in the previous week.

U.S. chemicals company DuPont extended its $6 billion takeover bid for Denmark's Danisco by four weeks and said shareholders of 6 percent of Danisco's stock had accepted the offer.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc will release its report on job cuts for March at 1130 GMT. Challenger reported 50,702 layoffs in the previous month.

Family Dollar's quarterly earnings report will show how well the company did in keeping shoppers coming back to its nearly 6,900 stores.

TIBCO Software Inc fell 7.2 percent after the bell on Tuesday as its first quarter results and outlook failed to impress investors.

Japan upgraded its safety standards for nuclear power plants, the first official acknowledgement that norms were insufficient when an earthquake wrecked one of its facilities, triggering the world's worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> and Honda Motor Corp <7267.T> took fresh steps to scale back production or reduce orders of some parts in North America as supplies remain disrupted after the March 11 Japan earthquake.

Brent crude was steady near $115 on Wednesday, after falling as much as 0.6 percent on indications that higher fuel prices were weighing on consumer confidence in top user the United States, where crude inventories rose more than expected last week.

European shares hit a three-week high on Wednesday, with the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> index of top shares rising 0.9 percent.

Japan's Nikkei stock average <.N225> rose 2.6 percent, hitting its highest since a post-quake panic sell-off, as the yen softened against the dollar, but investors said the gains may be short-lived as bargain hunting by foreigners winds down.

On Tuesday, the Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> and the Standard & Poor's 500 <.SPX> both rose 0.7 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> added 1 percent.

(Reporting by Atul Prakash; Editing by Hans Peters)