Legal & General poaches EY's Jeff Davies, Electra closes successful tender offer
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 11 points lower on Thursday, after closing down 0.04% at 7,041.42 on Wednesday.
Stocks to watch
Legal & General announced it was poaching Ernst & Young senior partner Jeff Davies as its new chief financial officer on Thursday. The company said he would start in the spring replacing Mark Gregory, who will stay on until the end of August to ensure a smooth handover.
Electra Private Equity announced the final results of its tender offer, which was first announced on 8 November, on Thursday, with the offer closing at 1800 GMT on Wednesday. The FTSE 250 firm said the strike price was 4,650p and a total of 1,987,768 ordinary shares were validly tendered under the offer. As a result, all valid tenders would be satisfied in full and the total consideration payable under the offer is £92.43m.
Car dealership operator Inchcape has acquired a distribution business focused on Subaru cars and Hino commercial vehicles in South America for £234m cash. Covering Chile, Colombia, Peru and Argentina, the deal strengthens the FTSE 250 company's existing operations in the region and with the vehicle manufacturers, and is expected to be accretive to earnings in the first year of ownership by a mid to high single digit percentage.
Newspaper round-up
The government has pledged to give decent broadband speeds to up to 600,000 homes via a new £400m funding pot. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has freed up the money to help homes and businesses in the “hardest-to-reach” parts of the UK receive broadband speeds considered to be essential to modern life. – Guardian
Britain’s car industry reported record exports in the first 11 months of the year as a combination of the low pound and open access to Europe’s single market boosted sales. UK car exports jumped to 1.25m, the highest ever, after factories put on more shifts and increased overtime to meet the demand for British-made vehicles. - Guardian
The number of 25-year-olds who own their own home has more than halved in the last 20 years as soaring prices and a generational shift have knocked young people off the housing ladder. Research by Savills for the Local Government Association found that 46pc of all 25-year-olds owned their home 20 years ago, compared to 20pc now. It is not just young people who have been left out of home ownership, which has fallen among people of all ages 6.8pc since the peak in October 2004, and it now stands at 64.1pc. - Telegraph
Macquarie has snapped up a 50pc stake in Dong Energy’s giant Race Bank offshore wind farm in a $1.6bn deal which will also see the Australian investor take on part of the wind farm’s construction risk. The 573MW offshore wind project is being built almost 17 miles off the Norfolk coast and is due to begin powering the UK grid at the end of 2018. – Telegraph
The maker of luxury raincoats worn by royalty and stars of the silver screen and army officers’ trenchcoats in the First World War is to change hands. Aquascutum, worn by the Queen Mother, Sophia Loren, Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant, is to be bought by two buyers for $120 million, according to YGM Trading, its Hong Kong-based owner. It is unclear whether the deal heralds a break-up or the buyers will retain the business in its present form. – The Times
Small shops are beginning to experience the fallout of Brexit, with inflation and slowing sales growth resulting in “significant stress” for the finances of retailers, Begbies Traynor has warned. The restructuring group said that, despite high street sales holding up surprisingly well after the referendum in June, profits were being hit by prolonged discounting and rising costs associated with the higher minimum wage and the impact of weaker sterling, which had made supplies more expensive. – The Times
US close
The Dow 20,000 baseball caps remained under wraps on Wednesday, with US stocks recoiling further from the psychological level as oil prices slipped amid wrapping-paper thin volumes and news flow in the run-up to Christmas.
By the jingle of the closing bell, the Dow Jones had given up almost 33 points or 0.16% to finish at 19,941.96, while the S&P 500 shaved close to six points to 2,265.18 and the Nasdaq composite dropping 12.5 points to 5,471.43.
The dollar was down against the euro and yen but up slightly on the pound, while crude prices gave up up most of their gains from earlier in the week after the Energy Information Administration revealed crude inventories rose unexpectedly last week by 2.3m barrels to 485.4m barrels. Analysts had expected a drawdown of 2.5m barrels.
West Texas Intermediate lost 1.4% to $52.54 and Brent crude fell 1.5% to $54.53 a barrel.
"With the OPEC meeting out of the way, the focus remains firmly on what American oil producers will do, and for the moment they are doing the logical thing – increasing production to take advantage of higher prices," said analyst Chris Beauchamp at IG.
"Should this continue, it will mean more pain for OPEC and a need for further output cuts."
The only other major economic data was that existing home sales rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.7% to 5.61m in November, the strongest monthly reading since February 2007. This was ahead of the 5.54m predicted by analysts.
Weekly mortgage applications also rose 2.5% after a fall the week before.