31st Dec 2015 11:22
LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Thursday.
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COMPANIES
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Sports Direct International confirmed it will pay its staff above the UK National Minimum Wage starting from January 1, 2016. The sports retailer said this will affect both its directly employed UK employees and directly engaged casual workers, and will cost the company around GBP10 million annually. Earlier the Daily Mirror reported that Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley had pledged to raise workers' salaries by 15 pence an hour from 2016. This will benefit around 15,000 employees on zero-hours contracts and 4,000 agency staff, Daily Mirror said, and comes after Sports Direct was criticised for its treatment of staff. "I'm making a New Year's resolution pledge to the Daily Mirror - and I'm deadly serious," found Mike Ashley told the newspaper. "I want to see Sports Direct become the best high street retail employer, after John Lewis."
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Carnival said late Wednesday it is building four new cruise ships as part of an agreement with Italian shipbuilding company Fincantieri. Under the agreement, the Fincantieri will build two ships for Costa Asia, one for P&O Cruises Australia and one for Princess Cruises, with contracts expected to be executed in 2016. Carnival didn't provide any financial detail on the contracts. Carnival has 17 new ships scheduled to be delivered between 2016 and 2020, including the four ships announced Wednesday, which are expected to be delivered in 2019 and 2020.
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Royal Dutch Shell said Wednesday natural gas has started to flow from the Corrib gas field, offshore Ireland. The Corrib gas field is located 83 kilometres off Ireland's northwest coast and is expected to produce around 260 million standard cubic feet per day of gas, which is 45,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. The Corrib project is a joint venture between Shell E&P Ireland Ltd, which owns 45%, Statoil Exploration Ireland Ltd, which owns 36.5%, and Vermilion Energy Ireland Ltd, which owns 18.5%. Shell E&P Ireland is the project's operator.
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Reckitt Benckiser Group late Wednesday said it will commence a share repurchase programme in 2016, spending up to a maximum of GBP800 million. The programme will follow Reckitt's 2015 share buyback programme, also of GBP800 million, which it said was carried out to offset the dilutive impact of employee share schemes and to maintain borrowings at around current levels.
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UK defence services company QinetiQ Group said its North American unit has won a USD16.0 million contract with California-based General Atomics to work on equipment for the John F Kennedy aircraft carrier for the US Navy. QinetiQ will handle the control hardware and software for the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Arresting Gear which will be installed on the carrier.
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Genel Energy said it has plugged and abandoned the Aigle-1X exploration well an the CI-508 licence off-shore the Ivory Coast. The company said the well failed to find hydrocarbons. Genel has a 24% working interest in the license, and the completion of the well concludes its drilling programme in the Ivory Coast, it said.
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China Telecom Chief Executive Officer Chang Xiaobing has resigned as a result of an investigation on corruption allegations. He also was serving as the chairman and executive director of the state owned company. Yang Jie, COO, will be the acting CEO, until a new appointment, China Telecom said. The shares of the company have been on a decline as Xiaobing was being investigated by China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. He was reportedly detained by the authorities on December 27.
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MARKETS
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London shares were mostly lower in a half-day trading session that concludes a dramatic year of highs and lows for the FTSE 100 index in particular. Wall Street, which has a full trading day Thursday, is point up 0.1%.
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FTSE 100: down 0.3% at 6,257.12
FTSE 250: down 0.4% at 17,455.28
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 0.3% at 737.23
GBP: soft at USD1.4818 (USD1.4834)
EUR: flat at USD1.0914 (USD1.0916)
GOLD: flat at USD1,062.61 per ounce (USD1,061.60)
OIL (Brent): firm at USD36.74 a barrel (USD36.60)
(changes since previous London equities close)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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Britons' housing equity injections decreased to the lowest level in almost six years in the third quarter, the Bank of England said. Households injected GBP8.82 billion in the third quarter compared to GBP12.17 billion in the previous three months. This was the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2009, when it totalled GBP8.1 billion.
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The Chinese yuan lost ground against the US dollar again Thursday, after the People's Bank of China fixed the mid-point for the yuan to dollar exchange rate at the weakest since May 2011. The Chinese central bank set the central parity rate for the yuan at 6.4936 per dollar, compared to Wednesday's reference rate of 6.4895. The PBOC sets the central parity rate every morning and allows the currency to move up to 2% from that level. The yuan depreciated to 6.5046 against the greenback, a level not seen since May 2011. At Wednesday's close, the pair was valued at 6.4895.
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Belgian authorities have arrested a tenth man suspected of involvement in the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, prosecutors said. Belgium has been involved in hunting down suspects following the attacks, in which 130 people were killed, as several of the perpetrators had links to the country. The man, identified as Ayoub B, is a Belgian national born in 1993. He was detained during a police raid in the Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, where the mastermind of the Paris attacks had lived.
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Unknown gunmen have shot dead a senior pro-government commander in Yemen's provisional capital Aden, local sources said. Ahmed al-Idrisi, a commander in the pro-government Popular Resistance militia, was killed overnight in a drive-by shooting in the district of al-Mansoura in central Aden, the sources told dpa. The assailants fled the scene. Al-Idrisi's killing came a day after unknown gunmen shot dead a senior judge, Jalal Abdullah, in the same district. No one has claimed responsibility for either attack. In recent months, Aden has seen a series of attacks targeting loyalists of President Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi whose government is based in the southern city.
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The US is to host a meeting in February with leaders from the Association of South-East Asian Nations for the first time, the White House said, amid growing tensions with China over a maritime territorial dispute. President Barack Obama will host the February 15-16 summit in Rancho Mirage, California, for what the White House called an "unprecedented gathering."
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Two bombs exploded in the Kurdish stronghold of Qamishlo in north-eastern Syria, killing at least 17 people and injuring more than 30, according to Kurdish news outlet Rudaw. Both bombs were detonated near restaurants in an area of the city inhabited mostly by Christians, Rudaw reported. Suicide bombers reportedly blew themselves up in the attacks, Rudaw said, citing unspecified sources. Qamishlo, which is on the border with Turkey, is majority Kurdish, and the area has repeatedly been targeted by Islamic State militants, the report said.
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The Polish Parliament passed measures that give the current conservative government more control over public broadcasters, despite objections from the European Commission and media rights groups. The law makes broadcasters TVP and Polish Radio "national cultural institutes" and removes the current directors, to be replaced by new executives which can be appointed by the government. The ruling Law and Justice Party won a majority in October to govern alone for the first time.
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