Kingfisher sales swoop lower, AstraZeneca stroke drug fails

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The FTSE 100 is expected to fall 18 points on Wednesday morning, giving up some of the small gain from the previous day.

Stocks to watch

Full year sales at home improvement retailer Kingfisher fell 2.6% to £10.3bn while adjusted pre-tax profits rose 0.3% to £686m. "In the short term, the fundamentals of the UK economic backdrop remain positive, although we remain cautious on the outlook for France," said chief executive Véronique Laury.

AstraZeneca's Brilinta drug missed its target during a trial in stroke patients, proving less effective than aspirin. Clinical tests of Brilinta had been assessing efficacy of 90mg tablets taken twice daily compared to aspirin 100mg once daily in patients with acute ischaemic stroke or transient ischaemic attack (TIA).

National Grid announced its new UK executive director on Wednesday, appointing High Speed 1’s Nicola Shaw to the role.
The FTSE 100 electricity infrastructure firm said the appointment complemented that of John Pettigrew’s, who was announced as CEO in November.

Newspaper round-up

The nation’s small businesses can expect a wave of capital from a new generation of investors following the launch of a campaign to more than double the number of active angels backing UK firms by 2019. The new Become An Angel campaign, which will launch on Wednesday at the House of Commons, plans to recruit 23,000 new angels into the investor community, representing an extra £1bn-worth of growth capital. – Telegraph

Several major UK banks including HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group along with the Lloyd’s of London insurance market have signed up to a new voluntary charter aimed at getting more women into senior roles in the finance industry. Harriett Baldwin, the economic secretary to the Treasury, hailed the charter as evidence that the voluntary approach was working, and said if this momentum continued it would rule out the need for more prescriptive measures from the government. - Guardian

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou fired another salvo yesterday in his dogfight with an African budget airline, accusing it of breaching the terms of a licensing agreement with his easyGroup holding company. In a letter to Fastjet, Sir Stelios raised a series of grievances with the carrier, in which he owns a 12.6% stake, alleging that its directors and managers had failed to attend a meeting in Monaco to discuss the situation. – The Times

US close

US stocks ended mixed on Tuesday, with the Dow snapping a seven-day winning streak as investors digested news of coordinated terror attacks in Belgium.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 0.2% and the S&P 500 slipped 0.1%, but the Nasdaq eked out a 0.3% gain.

Although stocks in Europe fell sharply early in the day following reports of explosions at Brussels’ Zaventem airport and the city’s Maalbeek metro station, the DAX and CAC 40 reversed course to end up while the Stoxx 600 pared losses to close just a touch lower.

American Airlines ended in the red after it refuted earlier reports that the two explosions at Brussels international airport occurred next to its check-in desk.