17th Mar 2016 11:23
LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Thursday.
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COMPANIES
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GlaxoSmithKline said Chief Executive Andrew Witty will retire from his role in March 2017. The Drugmaker said a formal search for his successor will now begin, with internal and external candidates to be considered. Glaxo separately said its Advair Diskus asthma treatment met its primary endpoint in a study on children aged 4-11 with asthma.
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Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto said Chief Executive Sam Walsh will retire from his role in July. Walsh, 66, has been chief executive since 2013 and on the Rio Tinto board since 2009. He will be replaced by Jean-Sebastien Jacques, currently the chief executive of Rio's Copper & Coal business. Jacques will become deputy chief executive, and will join the board, with immediate effect to ensure a smooth transition.
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Royal Dutch Shell said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Refining, a unit of Saudi state oil company Saudi Aramco, to divide the assets of their Motive Enterprises joint venture. Under the plans, Saudi Refining will retain the Motiva name and take sole ownership of the Port Arthur refinery in Texas. It will also retain 26 distribution terminals and have the exclusive licence to use the Shell brand for gasoline and diesel sales in Texas, most of the Mississippi Valley, the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic markets in the US. Shell will take sole ownership of the Norco and Convent refineries in Louisiana, nine distribution channels and Shell branding in Florida, Louisiana and the Northeastern region of the US.
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The UK Takeover Panel said the rival bidders for Argos-owner Home Retail Group have agreed to an amendment to the deadline to make firm offers for the company. J Sainsbury, the UK grocer, and Steinhoff International Holdings, the South African group, have until the end of Friday to make a firm offer for Home Retail or walk away. If neither makes a firm offer, the deadline will stand, but the Takeover Panel said Sainsbury's and Steinhoff have agreed that if one makes an offer, the other bidder will be treated as a competing offeror and will be given 53 days more to make a firm, rival offer for Home Retail.
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Crest Nicholson Holdings said forward sale revenues were up from last year, as the trading environment "continues to be positive" and sales "have been correspondingly strong". Crest Nicholson Chairman William Rucker said, in a statement to be given at the company's annual general meeting, the housebuilder's cumulative forward sales revenues for 2016 was GBP311.0 million at March 11, 16% higher than GBP269.0 million last year. Rucker said this was primarily down to a higher average selling price in the sales mix.
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Ted Baker reported growth in profit in its recently-ended financial year, particularly driven by strong sales growth in North America, and said it has received a positive initial reaction to its spring/summer collections. The luxury fashion retailer said its pretax profit in the year ended January 30 rose to GBP58.7 million from GBP48.8 million the year before, as revenue grew to GBP456.2 million from GBP387.6 million. Ted Baker will pay a total dividend of 47.8 pence for the year, up 19% on the 40.3p it paid the year before.
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OneSavings Bank said pretax profit shot higher in 2015 as lending grew and its cost-income ratio improved further. The lender said pretax profit for the year to the end of December grew to GBP105.3 million from GBP63.7 million a year earlier. This was helped by costs associated with its listing in London in June 2014 not repeating. OneSavings said it will pay a final dividend of 6.7 pence per share, taking its total payout for the year to 8.7p, in line with its target dividend policy.
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Shipping services company Clarkson said former shareholders in RS Platou, which Clarkson bought in 2015, have sold shares in Clarkson. The former shareholders sold 2.0 million shares, about a 6.6% stake, at 1,840 pence per share via a secondary placing, which was announced on Wednesday. Clarkson shares closed at 1,840.00p on Wednesday. The sale was worth around GBP36.8 million in total.
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Private hospitals operator Spire Healthcare Group said it swung to a pretax profit in 2015 due to a significant fall in one-off costs, as revenue ticked higher. Spire said it made a pretax profit of GBP73.6 million in the year to the end of December, compared to a GBP7.0 million loss a year earlier when it booked exceptional costs related to restructuring, hospital closures and regulatory and governance costs. It also booked significant finance costs a year earlier due to its listing in London in July 2014. Spire said it will pay a final dividend of 2.4 pence per share, up from 1.8p a year earlier. As it paid an interim dividend in 2015, which it did not in 2014 due to its listing, its total dividend more than doubled to 3.7p from 1.8p.
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Property, residential, construction and services company Kier Group said pretax profit declined in the first half of its financial year, as the cost of the integration of its Mouchel acquisition offset a rise in revenue. The group said pretax profit for the six months to the end of December was GBP18.0 million, a 35% fall from the GBP27.8 million reported last year. Kier hiked its interim dividend by 12% to 21.5 pence per share from 19.2 pence, which it said reflected its confidence in continued growth.
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LondonMetric Property said it has acquired three distribution warehouses in the UK for a total of GBP21.8 million. The warehouses cover a combined floor space of 212,600 square feet are and located in Castle Donington, Royston and Hemel Hempstead. The warehouses are currently let to toy retailer Hamleys, Howdens and Goodrich and are generating annual rent of GBP1.5 million.
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Hutchison China MediTech said it has raised USD101.3 million through the sale of American depositary shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market in New York. The company sold 7.5 million ADSs at USD13.50 per ADS. Each ADS is the equivalent of half an ordinary share in Hutchison China MediTech listed in London, so the price achieve is equivalent to around 1,942 pence per share. Hutchison China MediTech shares closed Wednesday at 2,309.54p.
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MARKETS
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UK indices were lower ahead of a Bank of England interest rate decision at 1200 GMT. Dovish guidance from the US Federal Reserve on Wednesday and subsequent weakness in the dollar was supporting mining stocks and also sent the gold higher. Wall Street was pointed to a lower open.
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FTSE 100: down 0.7% at 6,135.20
FTSE 250: down 0.4% at 16,685.11
AIM ALL-SHARE: down 0.5% at 706.96
GBP: up at USD1.4352 (USD1.4104)
EUR: up at USD1.1327 (USD1.1082)
GOLD: up at USD1,269.82 per ounce (USD1,228.57)
OIL (Brent): firm at USD40.98 a barrel (USD40.16)
(changes since previous London equities close)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has played down suggestions he will be forced to find more spending cuts or put up taxes in order to balance the books by the time of the next general election. The chancellor was forced to announce more than GBP50 billion of additional borrowing in the Budget on Wednesday after the Office for Budget Responsibility sharply downgraded its outlook for the economy. However, he insisted Thursday he would still be able to meet his self-imposed target of delivering a budget surplus by the time of the election in 2020. "We have got to hold to the course that we have set out," he told BBC1's Breakfast programme.
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Eurozone consumer prices declined for the first time in five months in February as initially estimated, final data from Eurostat showed. The harmonized index of consumer prices fell 0.2% year-on-year following a 0.3% rise in January. The annual rate matched the flash estimate published on February 29. The latest decline was the first since September and the biggest since February 2015, when prices slid 0.3%.
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UK Prime Minister David Cameron is to warn fellow EU leaders of a fresh wave of migrants from Libya this summer, as he makes clear Britain's readiness to assist the new government of the north African state in taking on people-smugglers. The Prime Minister is joining leaders of the other 27 EU states at a summit in Brussels which is set to be dominated by the migration crisis. The European Council will seek to finalise a deal with Turkey under which the EU would accept one Syrian refugee from camps in the country for every irregular migrant returned.
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EU President Donald Tusk warned that "difficult" talks lay ahead on a contentious plan being negotiated with Turkey to end irregular migration into Europe, hours before the bloc's leaders were set to meet to forge a common approach. The plan - under which migrants would be swapped between the EU and Turkey in a bid to end illegal smuggling across the Aegean Sea to Greece - is the bloc's latest effort to end a surge of migrants and asylum seekers into the continent.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for EU leaders this week to agree to more aid for Turkey to help accommodate millions of refugees, saying the EU had "a real chance" to resolve the region's migration crisis. Merkel will join EU leaders for the two-day summit in Brussels on Thursday to see "whether we can reach an agreement that could give us, for the first time, a real chance of a lasting and pan-European solution to the refugee crisis," the chancellor told the lower house of German parliament. She said that Europe will be defined for years to come by its management of the refugee crisis, adding that its status as a "rich continent" means it must rise to the challenge in unison.
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A Republican presidential debate scheduled for Monday in Salt Lake City, Utah, has been cancelled after frontrunner Donald Trump declined to participate, host Fox News revealed.
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US President Barack Obama issued an executive order imposing new sanctions on North Korea in response to Pyongyang's nuclear test in January and a ballistic missile test last month. The executive order enables the US to implement a UN Security Council resolution passed earlier this month significantly tightening sanctions on North Korea and a new US law on sanctions against the reclusive communist country.
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Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff named her mentor and predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as her chief of staff. The move comes with Lula under investigation for corruption allegations, while Rousseff is profoundly unpopular amid a severe economic downturn and the same far-reaching scandal in which Lula is caught up, involving billions of dollars in alleged kickbacks by state-owned oil company Petrobras. Rousseff, 68, said that Lula will head Brazil's Casa Civil, an influential post similar to a cabinet chief. Lula's new appointment will make it more difficult for prosecutors to pursue legal actions against him.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; [email protected]; @ArvindBhunjun
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