Home Retail recommends Sainsburys offer, Euromoney to sell energy publishers
London open
The FTSE 100 is predicted to decline 46 points on Friday morning, extending the 28-point loss from the previous day.
Stocks to watch
The board of Home Retail has agreed to recommend Sainsbury's takeover offer of 0.321 new shares in the supermarket group and 55p cash, plus 27.8p in dividends. With Sainsbury's shares closing at a price of 276.3p on Thursday, the offer values Home Retail shares at of 143.7p apiece, pricing the Argos owner at £1.2bn, or 171.5p and £1.4bn when the dividend payments are factored in.
RSA Insurance Group has completed the sale of its operations in Colombia to Grupo de Inversiones Suramericana. The company said it expected that the completion of the remaining disposals of its Latin American operations - in Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay - to occur over the next six months.
Euromoney Institutional Investor announced its intention to sell its energy publishing businesses on Friday, for a total cash consideration of $18m. The FTSE 250 firm said it had entered into an agreement to sell Gulf Publishing Company in Houston and Petroleum Economist in London to a consortium led by Gulf’s CEO John Royall and media investor Russell Denson.
Newspaper round-up
Tata Steel’s hunt for a buyer to save its British business could be hampered by the firm’s £15bn pension scheme, complicating rescue efforts that David Cameron admitted had “no guarantees of success”. The business, which employs 15,000 people at Port Talbot and other sites around the country, is saddled with more than 130,000 savers who are entitled to a pension. - Telegraph
Tata has accused David Cameron of sleepwalking into the steel crisis by helping China to block EU efforts to increase tariffs on its cheap imports. An executive from the Indian group told a Commons committee weeks ago that British support for China could lead to an “even greater steel crisis”, according to a transcript. Senior Tata officials are said to be amazed at the prime minister’s failure to heed their warnings that China would dump cheap steel on the market, undercutting Britain. - Times
Some of the UK’s biggest companies, including Rolls-Royce and Petrofac, have been drawn into a scandal over alleged bribery and corruption in the international oil industry. The Serious Fraud Office is understood to have teamed up with the FBI and the US Department of Justice to investigate claims that a Monaco-based lobbying firm, Unaoil, was involved in the payment of bribes to officials in Iraq, Syria, Kazakhstan, Kuwait and other oil-producing nations. - Times
Tesco is mulling the sale of its Giraffe restaurant chain in a move to cut its losses and distance itself from its former management’s wrong-footed strategy. The supermarket bought the family-friendly restaurant chain in an ill-fated acquisition three years ago under the direction of former chief executive, Phil Clarke, who saw Giraffe as an opportunity to lure more customers into its larger stores. - Telegraph
US close
US stock markets closed out the year's strongest month but showed a little caution on Thursday ahead of Friday's April Fools non-farm payrolls report.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrials Average was down 0.18% at 17,685.09, with the S&P 500 losing 0.2% to 2,059.74, but the Nasdaq composite minutely higher at 4,869.85, a rise of 0.55 points or 0.01%.
The Dow and S&P 500 have both gained ground over the first three months of the year, with both up around 7.0% in March, after jumping back by about 13% from the 22-month lows reached at the start of February – led by a rebound in commodity and bank stocks.
Oil futures were in the red late in the day on the expectation of rising supplies from Iran and bearish US inventory data published overnight, after seeing a bounce earlier due to a weaker dollar.
The dollar index fell to a fresh five-month low to record its worst quarter in five years.