U.S. stock index futures rose on Monday, signaling a rebound from Friday's steep losses, ahead of data expected to show U.S. manufacturing grew for a third consecutive month.

* Shares of Ford Motor Co rose 5 percent to $7.35 in premarket trading after the carmaker reported quarterly results.

* After weak U.S. consumer sentiment data released on Friday, investors braced for numbers on construction spending, pending home sales as well as manufacturing data from the Institute of Supply Management.

* The banking sector will be in the spotlight after CIT Group Inc , a U.S. lender to hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, filed for bankruptcy Sunday as the global financial crisis left it unable to fund itself and the recession hit its loans.

* Oil topped $78 a barrel, retracing some of the previous session's 3.6 percent drop, as a bullish manufacturing picture from China helped to allay fears about the pace of the rebound in global energy demand.

* S&P 500 futures rose 6.8 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 58 points and Nasdaq 100 futures added 6 points.

* Goldman Sachs Group Inc is in talks to buy millions of dollars of tax credits from Fannie Mae , but the U.S. Treasury could block the deal on concerns it would help Goldman reduce its own tax bill, The Wall Street Journal reported.

* HSBC's China Purchasing Managers' Index rose to an 18-month high in October, pointing to sustained strength in the country's vast manufacturing sector.

* Comcast Corp and General Electric Co are closer to a deal to give Comcast a 51 percent stake in GE's NBC Universal. A formal announcement may come this week, the New York Times reported, citing sources.

* Denbury Resources Inc agreed to buy Encore Acquisition Co for $3.2 billion to create one of North America's largest oil production and exploration companies.

* Japan's Nikkei average dropped 2.3 percent on Monday, while European shares were slightly higher in late morning trade, following Friday's big losses, weighed by pharmaceutical stocks such as Roche .

* The Dow industrials dropped 2.5 percent on Friday, its worst slide since July, on concerns the economic recovery won't be robust enough to sustain the seven-month stock rally as financials sank on renewed worries about Citigroup Inc's balance sheet.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

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