AstraZeneca completes Aspen deal, Paysafe swallows Income Access

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 27 points higher on Thursday, after closing 0.58% lower at 6,781.51 on Wednesday.

Stocks to watch

AstraZeneca announced on Thursday morning that it has completed its commercialisation agreement with Aspen Global Incorporated, for rights to its global anaesthetics portfolio outside the US. The FTSE 100 pharmaceutical firm said the agreement covers seven established medicines - Diprivan, EMLA, Xylocaine, Marcaine, Naropin, Carbocaine and Citanest. “As AstraZeneca will retain a significant ongoing interest in the portfolio, the upfront payment - to be recognised in the third quarter of 2016 - along with all future milestone and royalty payments, will be reported as externalisation revenue in the company’s financial statements,” AstraZeneca's board said in a statement.

FTSE 250 payment solutions provider Paysafe has acquired affiliate technology business Income Access Group for a cash consideration of CAD40m. Founded in 2002 and based in Montreal, with employees in Vancouver, London and Brisbane, Income Access provides innovative affiliate technology for businesses to manage their performance marketing programmes. Paysafe president and chief executive officer Joel Leonoff said: "By adding Income Access's affiliate technology to our product suite alongside our Skrill and NETELLER brands and deepening our merchant relationships, this transaction delivers on Paysafe's strategic objectives to provide relevant payment solutions that serve the evolving needs of our merchants.”

After a solid third quarter's trading, Safestore said it was confident that adjusted earnings would be slightly ahead of current market expectations. The self-storage group generated sales of £28.6m in the three months to 31 July, which up 9.2% on a like-for-like basis, or 6.6% if excluding the effect of currency rates.

Newspaper round-up

The scrapping of a dividend by specialist plastics group Carclo due to its spiralling pension deficit triggered rules that prohibited a payout could be a watershed moment for British business and further highlighted the corporate pension crisis. The combined deficit of all the UK’s 6,000 pension funds has risen by £100 billion to £710 billion in the past month, according to PwC’s Skyval Index. - The Times

Rolls-Royce has hit back at government attempts to crack down on the profits defence companies make on military contracts. Warren East, chief executive of the blue-chip engineer, warned that unless industry can make a decent return on contracts, it will abandon them – with serious implications for the country’s military industry. - Telegraph

The battle for control of Poundland took a new turn last night after Elliott Capital said that it had raised its stake in the retailer to 22.7 per cent. The disclosure comes three weeks after the American activist hedge fund, which has been increasing its holding in the high street discounter for months, managed to squeeze a few extra pence out of Steinhoff International, the South African furniture and clothing retailer, which is pursuing its own bid for Poundland. - The Times

US close

US stock indices fell on Wednesday to complete the month of August just below flat, with equities tracking oil prices lower as private payrolls data was stronger than expected but did not give a strong indication of the more important non-farm payrolls report at the end of the week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.29% to 18,400.88 points over the session and dropped 0.2%, the S&P 500 fell 0.24% to 2,170.95 and was modestly down 0.1% since July.

The Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.24% to 5,213.22 points but picked up 1% over the month of August.

As stocks searched for direction, there was a typically inconclusive reading from the comments of two Federal Open Market Committee members speaking on Wednesday, as Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, a voting member, said at an event in China that the rate setting committee was close to achieving its employment and inflation target, hinting that policy tightening is on the horizon.

In contrast, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans suggested at the same event that he was in no rush to tighten policy.

Crude oil made a decisive move lower as the dollar weighed and US inventories data was worse than expected, with front-month West Texas Intermediate down 3.3% to $44.80 per barrel and Brent 2.8% to $47.04 per barrel.