31st Dec 2015 10:26
LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices on Thursday.
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FTSE 100 - WINNERS
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Sports Direct, up 0.4%. The sports clothing and equipment retailer confirmed it will pay its staff above the UK National Minimum Wage starting from January 1, 2016. The 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.
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FTSE 250 - LOSERS
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Ocado Group, down 4.4%. The online grocery delivery service continued to suffer having fallen throughout the trading week due to concerns about the challenge posed to it by Amazon.com, the US online retail giant, expanding its grocery delivery business in the UK. Amazon Pantry was launched in November and delivers household goods and groceries to customers in the UK. It currently offers 4,000 branded products and charges GBP2.99 for next-day delivery per large box. Now, the online retail giant is planning to add thousands more products in 2016, UK chief Christopher North told the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday.
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MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS
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Serabi Gold, up 12%. The Brazil-focused gold miner said it has secured a new USD5.0 million short-term working capital convertible loan facility. Serabi said the loan will expire in January 2017 and may be drawn down in three separate instalments of an initial USD2.0 milllion, plus two further instalments of USD1.5 million apiece. The loan has been provided by Fratelli Investments and will be convertible into Serabi shares at 3.6 pence per share. Serabi shares closed at 2.72p on Wednesday. The company said the loan will provide it with extra working capital to bring the Sao Chico mine in Brazil into full production.
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MAIN MARKET AND AIM - LOSERS
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URU Metals, down 9.0%. The miner reported a widened pretax loss in the first half of its financial year but said it believes the future is positive in what has been a challenging time for the mining industry. URU said its pretax loss in the six months ended September 30 widened to USD1.1 million from USD477,000 in the same period the year before, during what it called a "very difficult" time for the mineral industry. The widened loss resulted from the write-off of USD890,000 in intangible assets in the recent half. "Despite the challenging environment, URU continues to believe that the long-term fundamentals of the base minerals industries remain positive and will be working hard in the coming year to unlock the value of our projects for our shareholders," Chairman David Subotic said in a statement.
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By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
Copyright 2015 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Related Shares:
OcadoSerabiSports DirectUru Metals