AstraZeneca sells nasal spray rights, RBS agrees payouts to some shareholders
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 35 points lower on Monday, after closing down 0.33% at 6,730.72 on Friday.
Stocks to watch
AstraZeneca has completed the sale of rights to its nasal spray outside of the US with Swiss pharmaceutical Cilag for $330m. The FTSE 100 company sold the rights for Rhinocort Aqua, a nasal spray to treat allergic and nonallergic rhinitis and polyps, for use outside of the US to a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.
Global specialist healthcare company BTG announced the inclusion of treatment with its PneumRx Coils product in guidelines for the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on Monday, as published by the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD). The FTSE 250 firm also said that at the same time, the French Ministry of Health published its positive recommendations regarding PneumRx Coils on its website. “We're pleased that both GOLD and the French Ministry of Health have acknowledged the value of PneumRx Coils for emphysema patients,” said chief medical officer Guenter Janhofer.
Royal Bank of Scotland said it had agreed payouts to some shareholders to settle allegations that it misled them ahead of a £12bn rescue rights issue in 2008 at the outbreak of the financial crisis. RBS said it had concluded “a full and final settlement with three out of the five shareholder groups representing 77% of the claims by value”. “In total, RBS is willing to make available settlement sums of up to £800m assuming settlement of all claims, to be split among all five shareholder groups, subject to agreement and claim validation,” RBS said in a statement.
Newspaper round-up
A last-gasp rescue for Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest surviving bank, has been thrown into doubt after reformist prime minister Matteo Renzi decisively lost a referendum on constitutional reform on Sunday. MPS and advisers JPMorgan and Mediobanca will meet as early as Monday morning to decide whether to pull a plan to go ahead with a €5bn recapitalisation, according to people informed of the plan. – Financial Times
Britain’s Supreme Court will start to hear arguments in one of the most politicised cases for decades on Monday, to decide whether Theresa May has the right to trigger Brexit without a parliamentary vote. All 11 Supreme Court justices will hear the case, so that there can be no accusations that the court would have delivered a different decision if the panel had been constituted differently. – Financial Times
One of the key business groups in British corporate governance has urged the Government to stick to its guns on putting workers on company boards, despite the signal last week that it would row back from this plan. Theresa May is due to meet with business groups on Monday to discuss her proposals to make businesses answerable to the rest of society, which she announced during her leadership campaign over the summer. – Telegraph
Formula One is locked in a dispute with authorities in India over £41.1m ($51.4m) of unpaid Grand Prix fees dating back to 2012, according to company documents. The Indian Grand Prix only took place three times, from 2011 to 2013, and was held on a track near New Delhi. – Telegraph
Britain’s rapidly growing army of agency workers is as serious an issue as zero-hours contracts, with full-time agency staff earning hundreds of pounds a year less than employees doing the same jobs, according to a new report into the issue. The Resolution Foundation thinktank warns that agency staff are the new ‘secret agents’ in the UK labour market, as it begins an 18-month investigation into the whole area of agency work. – Guardian
Arms companies in the UK and elsewhere in western Europe bucked the downward trend in sales in much of the rest of the world by recording a 6.6% rise last year, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). UK companies listed in the top 100 arms companies were among those who reversed the trend, with sales up 2.8% in 2015. Arms sales by western European companies had dropped in 2013 and 2014. – Guardian
Thousands of restaurant businesses in Britain could go bust because the fall in sterling since the Brexit vote has sharply raised the cost of imported food and wine, an accountancy firm has warned. Moore Stephens says that 5,570 restaurant businesses have at least a 30% chance of insolvency in the next three years, due to inflationary pressures and stagnating disposable incomes. – Guardian
Theresa May is facing a cabinet split over plans to offer “cash for access” to the single market when Britain leaves the European Union. Boris Johnson yesterday appeared to reject a proposal by David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, for the government to pay into EU coffers in return for preferential terms for business. – The Times
US close
US stocks ended the week on a mixed note following the release of a somewhat unsatisfactory report on the state of the US jobs market and as traders pulled in their horns ahead of potentially market-moving news on the political front in the euro area over the upcoming weekend.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average erased 0.11% or 21.51 points to close at 19,170.42 points, but the S&P 500 rose 0.04% or 0.87 points to 2,191.95 points, and the Nasdaq edged higher by 0.09% or 4.55 points to 5,255.65 points.
For the week as a whole, the S&P 500 finished down by 1%, for its first weekly retreat since the 8 November elections.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury note down by seven basis points to 2.38% by the closing bell.
Non-farm payrolls grew by 178,000 in November, more than the 142,000 jobs created in the previous month and just slightly below the 180,000 consensus forecast.
In parallel, the unemployment rate fell to 4.6% from 4.9% in October, which was the lowest level since 2007, but in part because the labour force participation rate slipped to 62.7% from 62.8%.
Hourly earnings were down 0.1% month-on-month, weaker than 0.2% rise expected, lowering the year-on-year rate of increase from 2.8% to 2.5% (consensus: 2.8%).
Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said: “On the face of it, the combination of falling unemployment and sluggish-looking wage numbers appears to support the idea that perhaps the Fed can allow the economy to run hotter for longer without taking undue inflation risks. But we are very skeptical.”