DCC to buy Hammer Consolidated Holdings, Ashmore reports flat quarterly flows

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 25 points higher on Friday, after closing down 0.66% at 6,977.74 on Thursday.

Stocks to watch

Irish investment holding company DCC announced its technology division is to buy Hammer Consolidated Holdings, a server and storage solutions reseller, for about £38m. The acquisition by DCC Technology, which trades under Exertis, is expected to be completed by the end of the year, with the transaction’s value based on an initial market value of £38.3m.

Specialist emerging markets asset manager Ashmore Group updated the markets on its assets under management on Friday, for the quarter to 30 September. The FTSE 250 firm said assets under management increased by $2bn during the period, driven solely by positive investment performance, with net flows flat for the three months. It said the neutral net flow for the quarter resulted from small net inflows into the blended debt, local currency, corporate debt and overlay/liquidity themes, offset by equally small net outflows from equities, external debt, and multi-asset. “The continued improvement in net flows is encouraging in what is typically a quiet quarter,” said CEO Mark Coombs.

Provident Financial´s performance during the third quarter was in-line with management's own expectations, the company said in a statement. Credit quality at all three of its main units was described as "very sound", with the lender confident of its ability to deliver "good" full-year results. Group funding and liquidity position remained strong and sufficient to fund maturities and projected growth in the business until May 2018.

Newspaper round-up

SoftBank and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund are preparing to launch a new tech fund that will manage as much as $100bn, in a move that will create one of the largest tech investment funds in the world. The new fund, dubbed the SoftBank Vision Fund, will be based in London and seeded with $25bn from SoftBank and up to $45bn from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund over the next five years, according to a statement from Masayoshi Son’s Japanese telecoms group. – Financial Times

Tesco will once again sell Marmite online after the grocer ended a 24-hour stand-off with Unilever over proposed price rises that foreshadowed inflationary pressures analysts say will be inescapable if sterling continues its fall. Britain’s biggest supermarket had refused to comply with Unilever’s proposed increases and instead pulled dozens of products — including Marmite spread and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream — from its website, provoking a public storm over the High Street consequences of June’s Brexit vote. – Financial Times

The French finance minister, Michel Sapin, has said that US banks have told him they will move some activities out of Britain to other European countries in the wake of the referendum decision to leave the EU. Sapin said that until now US banks had adopted a wait-and-see approach towards their British investments. – Guardian

Women get paid less than men at every stage in their careers but the gender pay gap is widest during their 50s, according to new analysis. The pay gap begins as soon as women start working and is at its greatest when a woman turns 50, with female employees cumulatively £85,040 worse off than men over the next decade, according to TUC analysis of figures from the Office for National Statistics. – Guardian

An outspoken investor backed by one of Britain’s richest fund managers has launched an attack on William Hill’s proposed £5bn tie-up with Amaya, branding the talks a waste of time that risk damaging the British bookmaker. Parvus Asset Management, whose backers include Sir Chris Hohn of the Children’s Investment Fund, said it was the largest owner of William Hill, with 14.3pc of its shares. – Telegraph

US close

Stocks markets in the US finished lower on Thursday as risk appetite was hit by poor Chinese trade data and continuing low levels of US joblessness that reinforced the impression that December may see an interest hike from the Federal Reserve.

Amid further conflicting influences of a lower dollar and oil creeping higher, the main stock indices all erased most of their larger earlier losses, with Dow Jones Industrial Average closing 0.25% lower at 18,098.94 points, the S&P 500 down 0.31% to 2,132.55 and the Nasdaq dropping 0.49% to 5,213.33 points.

As well as hawkish Fed minutes overnight, Wall Street opened on the back of a risk-off sentiment around global markets as Chinese exports were shown to have shrunk 10% year-on-year in September, below expectations of a 3% decline, sparking concerns for the world’s second largest economy and global demand.

While prices of many natural resources were sent reeling by the China data, crude oil steadied over the course of the session having fallen when OPEC revealed September’s oil production rose to its highest level in eight years.

Not long before 1700 EDT, West Texas Intermediate was up 0.5% to $50.45 a barrel and Brent crude was 0.29% higher at $51.96.

Closely monitored ahead of a Boston speech by Fed head Janet Yellen on Friday, the Labor Department reported that jobless claims were unchanged at 246,000 in September, below the 253,000 forecast, which was the lowest reading since November 1973.

Wednesday's meeting minutes suggested the majority of Fed policymakers are ready to be persuaded to hike rates in December if data continues along current lines, so the jobless data was further grease on the tracks.