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TOP NEWS SUMMARY: Zurich Pulls Out Of RSA Deal To Tend To Own Issues

21st Sep 2015 10:08

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Monday.
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COMPANIES
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RSA Insurance Group confirmed an earlier statement by Switzerland's Zurich Insurance Group that the latter has pulled out of talks to acquire the UK insurer. RSA said that as a result of the recent deterioration of trading conditions in Zurich's general insurance arm, it had decided to pull out of the talks. RSA said Zurich had confirmed its due diligence findings were in line with its expectations and it had not found anything related to RSA that would have prevented it from going ahead with the talks. Zurich said in a short statement that discussions with RSA about making a bid for the British insurer had been terminated, without providing any further details.
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Inmarsat said it has agreed a strategic partnership with German telecommunications provider Deutsche Telekom to develop a new combined satellite and a high-speed ground network, to be dubbed the 'European Aviation Network.' The network is designed to provider in-flight high-speed internet access in Europe. The network will combine coverage from Inmarsat's new S-band satellite with a ground network operating in the same frequency band developed and run by Deutsche Telekom.
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HSBC Holdings reportedly plans to add 4,000 positions in China's Pearl River Delta region in the coming three to four years, even as the Asia-focused lender cuts jobs elsewhere. In June, the company had announced certain restructuring actions, which were reportedly expected to eliminate 25,000 jobs globally. The planned appointments in China are to support the company's retail banking and wealth management business.
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A group of telecommunications and media companies have joined the Institute of Directors to denounce the quality of UK broadband services and call on the country's competition watchdog to investigate the role played by BT Group in the market, in a letter published in the Financial Times. BT's ownership of the national telecoms network has resulted in a "substandard experience for millions of customers," according to the letter, which called for "radical reform" of the market. The letter was signed by a number of industry bodies and by Vodafone Group, Sky and TalkTalk Telecom Group.
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Irish pharmaceutical firm Shire said it has received approval from the European Commission for Intuniv for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and adolescents from 6 to 17 years old for whom stimulants are not suitable, not tolerated or ineffective.
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Construction and support services company Balfour Beatty said its joint venture with FTSE 250 peer Carillion has won a GBP292.0 million contract with Highways England. Under the deal, the Balfour-Carillion joint venture will handle the construction work on the upgrade of the A14 between Swavesey and Milton, part of the wider A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme. The work involves widening a stretch of the A14, along with junction rebuilds and a number of services diversions. Construction work is due to start in late 2016, subject to planning permission, and the upgraded A14 is due to open to traffic by 2020.
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Online electrical appliances retailer AO World said its UK business has continued to grow in the second quarter and said revenue from its German business is in line with its expectations. The FTSE 250-listed company said it expects revenue for the second quarter to the end of September to be up by around 20% to 21% year-on-year, driven by growth of around 30% from AO.com sales. The company said it has accelerated investment into the AO.com business in the quarter.
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Fellow FTSE 250 property investors SEGRO and UK Commercial Property Trust sealed a swap deal involving properties in Northampton and Radlett. Under the deal, industrial property investor SEGRO will pay GBP31.0 million to acquire a modern distribution warehouse in Brackmills in Northampton from UK Commercial Property Trust. UK Commercial Property Trust will then acquire the Ventura Park industrial estate in Radlett in Hertfordshire for GBP67.1 million. SEGRO said the balance of GBP36.1 million has been paid to it by UK Commercial Property Trust in cash.
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MARKETS
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UK indices were trading mixed with Shire leading the FTSE 100 on its Intuniv news and as it was upgraded to Overweight by Barclays. RSA shares sank 20% after Zurich's withdrawl.
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FTSE 100: up 0.6% at 6,138.19
FTSE 250: flat at 16,942.49
AIM ALL-SHARE: down 0.2% at 740.34
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GBP: down at USD1.5510
EUR: down at USD1.1287

GOLD: down at USD1137.46 per ounce
OIL (Brent): up at USD48.09 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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House prices in the UK jumped in September, the latest house price balance from property tracking website Rightmove showed on Monday, climbing 0.9% to 294,834 pounds. That follows the 0.8% decline in August. On a yearly basis, prices were up 6.4% - unchanged from the previous month's reading. The number of new sellers fell 4.9% in the North, however, and 7.1% in the South.
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Alexis Tsipras was set Monday to be sworn in for the second time as prime minister of Greece after his leftist SYRIZA party was swept back into power in a snap election. With nearly all the ballots counted, SYRIZA clinched more than 35% of the vote versus conservative rival New Democracy's 28%. Extremist far-right party Golden Dawn came in third with 7%. Less than two hours after polls closed Sunday evening, New Democracy leader Evangelos Meimarakis conceded defeat and Tsipras said shortly after that he would seek to build a government with former junior coalition partner Independent Greeks.
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Thousands of refugees were stranded Sunday, many without shelter, on the roads and borders of Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary as EU leaders prepared to meet this week to decide their fates. Their sheer numbers have proven overwhelming to EU border and security officials and politicians. Attempts by Austrian police to deny entry to some migrants trying to cross its southern border with Slovenia proved ineffectual as they were grossly outnumbered.
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German producer prices declined at a faster-than-expected pace in August, figures from Destatis showed. Producer prices fell 1.7% year-over-year in August, following a 1.3% decrease in the previous month. Economists had forecast a 1.6% drop for the month. Producer prices have been falling since August 2013. Excluding energy, producer prices dropped 0.5% annually in August and it edged down 0.2% from the prior month.
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China's service sector strengthened in the third quarter but the manufacturing sector continued to remain weak, the China Beige Book survey published by CBB International revealed. "Perceptions of China may be more thoroughly divorced from facts on the ground than at any time in our nearly five years of surveying the economy," CBB President Leland Miller said.
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The US and China are negotiating a cyberspace arms control agreement ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington this week, the New York Times reports. The two nations would agree not to use cyberweapons to attack each other's infrastructure during peacetime, officials involved in the talks told the newspaper. Such an agreement would be the first of its kind and would be designed to prevent cyberattacks against power plants, banking systems, mobile telephone networks and hospitals.
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The US government was facing its second shutdown in two years after the House of Representatives on Friday voted to freeze federal funding for an organization that provides women's health services and some abortions. Nearly all Republicans in the House and two Democrats voted for the legislation (241-187), which would block federal funding to Planned Parenthood for one year. The vote is largely symbolic, as Democrats have enough votes in the Senate to block it.
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German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and US Secretary of State John Kerry said their two countries would redouble their efforts for a diplomatic solution to the Syrian crisis. Speaking in Berlin after a meeting between the two, Steinmeier said it was clear after five years of civil war with many dead and millions of refugees that there was "a political and moral duty to put an end to the killing in Syria." Kerry announced that the US - after international criticism for its less than robust action in the Syria refugee crisis - would to take in at least 100,000 refugees from around the world in 2017.
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Iranian President Hassan Rowhani insisted that his country is upholding the conditions of a wide-ranging nuclear deal in a meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano flew to Tehran as the international nuclear watchdog is rushing to complete its investigation of alleged past nuclear weapons projects in Iran. The inquiry is part of an agreement that the Islamic republic struck with six major powers in July to curb its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com; @ArvindBhunjun

Copyright 2015 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.


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