18th Apr 2016 10:20
LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Monday.
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COMPANIES
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Centrica said it is on track to meet its targets for 2016 following a solid performance in the first quarter. The group, which has both upstream and downstream oil and gas operations and which runs the British Gas consumer energy business, said it expects to deliver GBP200.0 million in efficiency savings in 2016 as part of its plan to cut GBP750.0 million in costs out of the business. Like-for-like operating costs are set to be lower in 2016 year-on-year, Centrica said, and it said around 3,000 jobs will be cut across the business over the course of 2016, 800 of which were cut in the first quarter to the end of March. Centrica added that its number of UK home energy supply accounts shrank by 1.5% in the first quarter, primarily due to long-term contract churn.
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Consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser Group said it delivered strong like-for-like sales growth in its Health and Hygiene product portfolios in the first quarter, offset by a flat performance in its Home business and a decline in sales for its Portfolio Brands. Reckitt said like-for-like sales for its Health product business grew 11% in the quarter to the end of March. It saw good performances from its Durex range, Gaviscon heartburn relief and Strepsils throat lozenges in the quarter. Hygiene product sales were more muted, up 1.0% in the quarter.
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A British Airways flight was struck by a suspected drone as it was arriving at London's Heathrow Airport from Geneva on Sunday, police said. The Airbus A320 with 137 people on board landed safely and, following an inspection, engineers cleared it for the next flight. "An object, believed to be a drone, had struck the front of the aircraft," a Scotland Yard spokeswoman said, adding that a police investigation was underway but that no one had been arrested. British Airways is owned by International Consolidated Airlines Group.
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Budget airline easyJet is considering making a takeover offer for Monarch Airlines, a leisure carrier that has the same base, Luton airport north of London, The Sunday Times reported. The newspaper said Monarch, which came close to collapse in 2014, has appointed Deutsche Bank to examine its options. The airline is owned by Greybull Capital, the family investment fund buying Tata’s Scunthorpe steel works, The Times noted, adding easyJet is up against a range of other suitors, including China's HNA.
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AstraZeneca is preparing to join the bidding for California-based drug firm Medivation, according to a report in The Sunday Times. NASDAQ-listed Medivation has a market capitalisation of USD8.38 billion, and the newspaper said the prostate cancer specialist could fetch around USD10 billion.
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A consortium involving private equity group CVC Capital Partners and Qatar state-run investor Qatar Investment Authority is understood to have abandoned "secret" plans to acquire grocer J Sainsbury, Sky News reported. Sky said CVC, the QIA and Canadian property group Brookfield drew up detailed plans to acquire the group earlier this year and the plans were sufficiently advanced for the group to have been given formal approval to act as joint offeror for Sainsbury's, according to an insider. The consortium is thought to have abandoned the plan shortly after Sainsbury's struck a deal to acquire Home Retail Group, the owner of Argos, Sky said.
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Stuart Gulliver, chief executive officer of HSBC Holdings, will step down in two years as the UK bank replaces its top leadership, according to The Sunday Times. The report noted the company has started compiling a list of internal candidates and will also consider external applicants. The bank plans to appoint a new chairman first to help choose the next CEO, the Sunday Times reported, after HSBC said last month that it plans to nominate a successor to Chairman Douglas Flint next year.
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Emerging markets bank Standard Chartered is understood to have talked to former Bank of England Deputy Governor Paul Tucker about becoming its next chairman, The Times reported. Standard Chartered has been search for a replacement for incumbent chairman John Peace for four months, after he pledged to stand down as part of a wider boardroom clear out demanded by investors, The Times said.
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Interserve said it has been awarded a five-year contract with the Ministry of Defence's Defence Infrastructure Organisation operating arm worth GBP230.0 million. The support service and construction company said under the contract it will be providing facilities services to the six US Air Force bases in the UK and their associated satellite services, combining four existing facilities support contracts.
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MARKETS
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UK indices were mixed with oil stocks weighing on the FTSE 100 after oil producers meeting in Qatar failed to reach an agreement to freeze oil production. Oil prices have since staged a recovery after initially sliding. Wall Street was pointed to a lower open.
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FTSE 100: down 0.2% at 6,329.53
FTSE 250: flat at 16,912.42
AIM ALL-SHARE: flat at 732.55
GBP: flat at USD1.4196 (USD1.4186)
EUR: flat at USD1.1310 (USD1.1308)
GOLD: up at USD1,237.48 per ounce (USD1,230.90)
OIL (Brent): flat at USD42.09 a barrel (USD42.80)
(changes since previous London equities close)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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Top oil producers Sunday delayed an agreement to freeze the crude output levels to shore up low prices, saying they needed "more time for further consultations". The decision followed marathon talks in the Qatari capital Doha from which OPEC member Iran stayed away. Qatar's Energy and Industry Minister Mohammed bin Saleh said at a press conference that participants in the meeting had agreed on the need for more time for discussion. He did not give details. The minister added that OPEC members would meet in Vienna in June to consider a possible freeze. However, he ducked questions about whether Iran was to blame for failure to reach the deal.
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Thousands of oil workers in Kuwait started an open-ended strike on Sunday to protest at planned government cutbacks as the OPEC country is struggling with low crude prices. Nearly 7,000 workers, making up about 47% of Kuwait's total oil employees, have joined the strike, some protesters told dpa. The stoppage prompted the state-run Kuwait National Petroleum Co to implement an emergency plan.
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Many evacuees were facing shortages of relief supplies, and local transport was severely disrupted after two powerful earthquakes rocked the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, killing at least 42 people, local media reported Monday. Evacuees in some rural areas of Kumamoto prefecture have received only limited supplies of water, food and other daily necessities, the local Nishinihon newspaper reported. No abnormalities were detected at four nearby nuclear power stations, the government said. The two major quakes last week were the strongest since the earthquake and ensuing tsunami in north-eastern Japan on March 11, 2011.
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Ecuador's strongest earthquake since 1979 killed at least 272 people, caused widespread damage and prompted the government to deploy thousands of soldiers to the quake zone. The 7.8-magnitude tremor that struck Saturday evening some 170 kilometres north-west of the capital Quito also left more than 2,500 injured, President Rafael Correa said late Sunday, according to media reports.
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Brazil's lower house of parliament voted with the necessary two-thirds majority to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, following more than nine hours of debates and polling, with each member explaining their vote in a short statement. Some 367 lawmakers voted on Sunday night in favour of impeachment. Only 137 voted against. The decision by the lower house means that the senate can now suspend Rousseff from office for 180 days at the end of April with a simple majority. By October, the senate could then impeach her with a two-thirds majority.
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The average asking price for a house in the UK was up 1.3% on month in April, property tracking website Rightmove said on Monday, climbing to a record GBP307,033. That follows the 1.3% increase in March. Among the individual components of the survey, prices in London were up just 0.3% - the slowest of any region as buyers have looked to the suburbs in recent weeks, Rightmove said. On a yearly basis, prices advanced 7.3% after rising 7.6% in the previous month.
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Home prices in majority of the Chinese cities increased again in March, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. Compared to the previous month, house prices rose 62 cities out of 70 surveyed by the government. It fell in remaining 8 cities.
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Several Chinese ministries have announced plans to help people laid off from the steel and coal industries, amid massive overcapacity and an effort to shift the world's second-largest economy away from manufacturing, a report said Sunday. The suggestions from seven ministries, including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, put an emphasis on retraining workers to help them enter other fields, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
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The Russian military on Sunday dismissed reports of a dangerously close encounter between a US reconnaissance plane and a Russian jet over the Baltic Sea as "not true to reality". A spokesman for the US European Command, responding to a question from CNN, had accused the Russian Su-27 of performing "erratic and aggressive manoeuvres" as it got within 15 metres of the US aircraft.
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The Group of 20 major advanced and emerging economies are calling for "all countries and jurisdictions" to meet global standards for financial and tax transparency by mid-2017. The G20 called for "objective criteria" for identifying "non-cooperative jurisdictions," in a joint statement issued Friday in Washington on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
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Greece must continue to implement reforms to put its towering debts on a sustainable path, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Saturday, on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund's spring meetings in Washington. "Greece can and must still do more," he said. Athens must cut a further EUR5.4 billion to keep government finances in line with the most recent rescue package, agreed last year with Greece's international creditors.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; [email protected]; @ArvindBhunjun
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