Glaxo's COPD drug aces test, Hammerson dumps Thurrock

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The FTSE 100 is predicted to surge more than 180 points higher on Monday morning, according to pre-market trading.

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Late-stage drug trials by GlaxoSmithKline on its treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have proved successful. The Phase III clinical testing by GSK and project partner Innoviva delivered data that is likely to support European regulatory submission by the end of 2016.

Hammerson said it has exchanged contracts and completed the sale of Thurrock Shopping Park, Essex, to TH Real Estate for £93m. The sale price represents a net initial yield of 5.3% and is moderately below the book value as at 31 December 2015, Hammerson said, but was a further step in the group's £300m disposal programme to focus on higher growth assets.

FTSE 250 precision instruments Spectris has completed the acquisition of the software and associated assets of privately-held software solutions company Capstone Technology Corp for $22.5m. Capstone comprises two key software platforms: the MACS software suite providing engineering services and software for advanced process control optimisation and dataPARC, which is data historian, visualisation and analytics software suite for operational decision support. It will be integrated into Spectris' In-line Instrumentation segment.

Newspaper round-up

The British pound was powering ahead in Asian morning trading on Monday as the latest opinion polls on Britain’s EU referendum showed the two camps running neck and neck. In previous weeks, the campaign for the UK to vote in favour of leaving the EU at its June 23 referendum had slowly gained momentum, unsettling the pound and markets in general. - Financial Times

Royal Bank of Scotland has put on hold for the rest of the year its marketing efforts to create the brand for the smaller lender that it is supposed to carve out under state aid rules. Uncertainty surrounds the task of launching Williams & Glyn, with some observers predicting that the name will never appear on the high street because of IT issues and management problems. - The Times

Regulators are about to drop a contentious accusation that the “big six” energy suppliers have overcharged customers by £1.7bn a year, in the latest sign the watchdog is retreating from some of its toughest previous verdicts. After two years of investigation, the Competition and Markets Authority will publish its final recommendations on Friday on how to shake up the energy market. - Financial Times

US close

Losses in health and large-cap tech stocks weighed on Wall Street at the end of the week, amid higher-than-usual trading volumes following the quarterly expiry of futures and options tied to equity indices and individual stocks.

The Dow Jones Industrials lost 0.33% or 57.94 points to end the session at 17,675.16, alongside losses of 0.33% for the S&P 500 and of 0.92% in the tech-laden Nasdaq.

That saw the S&P 500 register its second consecutive retreat, with a weekly loss of 1.2%.