31st Aug 2018 07:37
LONDON (Alliance News) - Stock prices in London are set to open lower on Friday, as the pound remains strong and Asian stocks dip on uncertainty over the potential escalation of the US-China trade war. However, M&A excitement could provide some positive sentiment. IG says futures indicate the FTSE 100 index of large-caps to open 12.13 points lower at 7,503.90 on Friday. The FTSE 100 index closed down 0.6% at 7,516.03 on Thursday.In early UK company news, Whitbread has agreed to sell its Costa business to The Coca-Cola Co, Sage Group's chief executive will step down, and John Laing Infrastructure Fund reported a profit rise for the first half of 2018.Sterling was quoted at USD1.3016 early Friday, marginally higher than USD1.3011 at the London equities close on Thursday.Whitbread has entered into an agreement to sell off its coffee brand Costa to Coca-Cola Co for an enterprise value of GBP3.9 billion, the majority of which it will return to shareholders.The sale is part of Whitbread strategy to focus on growing its hotel business Premier Inn in the UK and Germany. It previously had announced plans to look at a demerger of Costa and Premier Inn. The sale is conditional on shareholder and regulatory approval, and is expected to be completed in the first half of 2019.Software group Sage said CEO Stephen Kelly has agreed to step down from his role immediately, but will remain available to the group until May 31, 2019.Sage has started the process to find a new chief executive, and in the meantime has appointed Chief Financial Officer Steve Hare to an additional post of chief operating officer on an interim basis.In the FTSE 250, John Laing Infrastructure Fund said its GBP1.45 billion takeover by Jura Acquisitions Ltd will be conditional on 75% approval gained from shareholders at a court and general meeting, to both be held on September 24.In addition, the fund reported that pretax profit for the six months to the end of June rose to GBP89.0 million from GBP34.7 million, on operating income that more than doubled to GBP96.3 million from GBP41.8 million.Elsewhere on the Main Market, Old Mutual released its first interim results since the group's restructuring, reporting a pretax profit of ZAR7.88 billion - about GBP411 million - from ZAR4.19 billion, while revenue climbed to ZAR39.74 billion from the ZAR35.18 billion recorded for the same period a year ago.Life annual premium equivalent sales were up 13% to ZAR5.8 million, net client cash flow soared to ZAR9.4 billion from ZAR1.6 billion, and funds under management climbed 2% to ZAR1.10 billion. Restaurant Group saw a 21% drop in adjusted pretax profit for the six months to the end of July at GBP20.1 million from GBP25.5 million, on revenue that fell by 2.1% to GBP326.1 million from GBP333.1 million.The restaurant operator, currently in the middle of a turnaround plan for its Leisure division, attributed the drop to investments made into the division, as well as bad weather and the impact of the World Cup.In the US on Thursday, Wall Street ended lower, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average ending down 0.5%, the S&P 500 down 0.4% and Nasdaq Composite closing 0.3% lower.Overnight, Bloomberg reported that US President Donald Trump intends to move ahead with plans to impose tariffs on USD200 billion in Chinese imports.Trump has also threatened to pull the US out of the World Trade Organization if the international trading group does not "shape up".In addition, the EU would abolish its tariffs on cars and industrial products if the US was willing to reciprocate, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said Thursday.While the move appeared to be in line with demands from President Donald Trump to have no barriers to trade, the US leader was quick to dismiss the proposal as "not good enough", in an interview with Bloomberg News just hours later."We are willing to bring down even our car tariffs to zero if it is reciprocal," Malmstrom had told the European Parliament's trade committee.Amazon.com on Thursday crossed the USD2,000 per share threshold for the first time ever and is on its way to be the second company to reach USD1 trillion market valuation.The online retailing giant's shares rose above USD2,025 during Thursday's trading on NASDAQ and closed up USD4.28, or 0.2%, at USD2,002.38. Amazon shares have risen about 70% this year, and 600% over the past five years.In European economic news, Germany's retail sales growth eased more than expected in July, figures from Destatis showed.Retail sales rose 0.8% year-on-year in July, slower than the 2.7% increase in June. Sales were expected to grow 1.3%. Nonetheless, this was the second consecutive increase.In Asia on Friday, the Japanese Nikkei 225 index closed flat. In China, the Shanghai Composite is down 0.3%, while the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong is down 0.9%.The manufacturing sector in China continued to expand in August, and at a slightly faster rate, the latest survey from the National Bureau of Statistics showed with a PMI score of 51.3. That beat expectations for a score of 51.0 and was up from 51.2 in July.The bureau also said that the non-manufacturing PMI came in at 54.2 - also exceeding expectations for 53.7 and up from 54.0 in the previous month.In Japan, industrial production edged down 0.1% in July from the previous month for the third consecutive month of fall, while its unemployment rate rose for the second month in a row, the government said.The decline in industrial production was worse than a median forecast of a 0.3% rise by analysts surveyed by the Nikkei Business Daily, and comes after a 1.8% fall in June.The economic calendar on Friday has Italy unemployment and inflation data at 0900 BST and 1000 BST respectively and eurozone unemployment and inflation readings at 1000 BST.