6th Jun 2016 10:23
LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Monday.
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COMPANIES
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easyJet reported growth in the number of passengers it carried in May, but its load factor slipped year-on-year. The budget airline said it carried 6.9 million passengers in May, a 5.7% increase on the 6.5 million it carried in the same month a year earlier. Load factor, however, slipped by 0.1 percentage point to 91.5% from 91.6%. easyJet noted that there were 173 cancellations during the month as a result of air traffic control strikes in France and bad weather conditions.
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Vodafone Group said it has extended its partner market agreement with sub-Saharan Africa telecommunications provider Afrimax Group to cover Zambia. Under the agreement the two companies will offer 4G data services under the 'Vodafone Zambia' brand. Afrimax has appointed Lars Stork as chief executive officer of Vodafone Zambia, which will be headquartered in Lusaka.
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Electra Private Equity said Electra Partners, its manager, has agreed to sell offshore trust and corporate services provider Elian for GBP435.0 million to Intertrust Group. Intertrust is a Dutch company that also provides offshore trust and corporate services. Electra Private Equity said it expects to get around GBP200.0 million in proceeds from the sale, a GBP41.0 million uplift on the valuation of the business at the end of March. Electra Partners led the buyout of Elian from previous owner Ogier Group in June 2014.
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PZ Cussons said it has appointed Caroline Silver as non-executive chairman, effective from January 1, 2017, following the retirement of Richard Harvey. Silver has been a non-executive director of the consumer products company since April 2014.
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Sports Direct International founder Mike Ashley has decided he will appear before MPs to defend his company, reversing a decision first announced on Friday. On Friday, Ashley told the Business, Innovation & Skills Committee he would not attend the hearing on Tuesday, having claimed his legal representation would not be available to join him. This prompted Iain Wright, chair of the BIS committee, to question whether Ashley had anything to be "frightened of". Wright also criticised Ashley's decision to pull out of the hearing given he had been given three months' notice of the appointment. But over the weekend, Ashley said he would appear in order to defend his "good name", adding he had decided a "lengthy legal battle would be no benefit to either of us".
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MARKETS
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UK stock indices were starting the week in the green with mining stocks making gains as commodity prices rose due to a weaker dollar following a poor US jobs report on Friday. The pound fell to a three-week low of USD1.4390 against the dollar after the pro-Brexit vote was shown in the lead in two polls over the weekend. Still ahead, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen addresses the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia about the economic outlook and monetary policy at 1730 BST. Wall Street was pointed to a higher open.
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FTSE 100: up 1.0% at 6,272.41
FTSE 250: up 0.2% at 17,101.31
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 0.3% at 744.82
GBP: down at USD1.4433 (USD1.4529)
EUR: flat at USD1.1349 (USD1.1338)
GOLD: flat at USD1,240.67 per ounce (USD1,240.22)
OIL (Brent): up at USD50.26 a barrel (USD49.51)
(changes since previous London equities close)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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Rhetoric in the Brexit debate got ever more inflammatory over the weekend, as warnings came thick and fast from both the Remain and Leave camps, with former Prime Minister John Major calling Brexiteers "squalid" and "deceitful". Prime Minister David Cameron corralled a cross-party group to accuse members of his own cabinet of conning the British public. The PM also warned he would make Leave campaigners like Boris Johnson "pay" for their claims about Britain's economic prospects outside the EU. Johnson hit back warning the UK will face a "triple whammy of woe", including an extra GBP2.4 billion bill from Brussels and the threat of a further bailout for struggling eurozone nations. Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, barrelled back into the campaign with plans for a couple of publicity stunts, while suggesting the shift in attention back to immigration was good for the Leave camp.
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Germany's factory orders decreased unexpectedly in April on weak foreign demand, figures from Destatis revealed. Factory orders declined 2.0% in April from March, when they grew by a revised 2.6%. Economists had forecast a 0.3% rise for April. A similarly sharp decrease was last seen in July 2015. Domestic orders increased 1.3%, while foreign orders fell 4.3% on the previous month.
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At least three people were dead after a passenger train hit a freight train near the Belgian city of Liege, the Belga news agency reported. The number of victims could rise as the wreckage is searched and the injured treated, Saint-Georges-Sur-Meuse Mayor Francis Dejon told the agency. Nine people were hospitalized, and a further 27 treated briefly at the scene. The six-carriage passenger train was carrying around 40 people at 90 kilometres per hour when it hit the back of a freight train, he said.
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Chinese president Xi Jinping and US Secretary of State John Kerry attended the opening ceremony of high-level meetings in Beijing amid heightened tensions in the South China Sea. "Differences between China and the US are quite normal...so long as the two sides tackle differences and sensitive issues in the principle of mutual respect and quality," Xinhua news agency cited Xi as saying at the ceremony. High-ranking officials from the two countries are expected to discuss issues including advancing bilateral relations, improving cooperation on issues including climate change and managing areas of conflict within the two-day dialogues and consultations.
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The candidates in Peru's presidential run-off election were locked in a tight race with exit polls providing conflicting results shortly after voting ended on Sunday. Two surveys by separate organizations report liberal economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has a lead of up to 2.4 percentage points, while another survey puts right-wing populist Keiko Fujimori ahead by 2.2 percentage points. In the first round of voting in April, Fujimori, leader of the rightist Popular Force Party and the daughter of the country's imprisoned former president, won 40% of votes to Kuczynski's 21%.
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Banned former FIFA president Joseph Blatter has denied claims he enriched himself over the last five years at football's governing body. "Everything is clean and fair as my lawyer, Richard Cullen, has said," Blatter told dpa. His comments follow an internal investigation at FIFA which said Blatter and two other former FIFA top officials enriched themselves by more than CHF79 million in the last five years.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; [email protected]; @ArvindBhunjun
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