Wood Group wins 10-year Sellafield contract, Petrofac trading in line with forecasts
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 56 points lower on Tuesday, having closed down 1.05% at 6,773.24 on Monday.
Stocks to watch
Wood Group said it had has won a 10 year contract worth $66m to supply programmable digital control technologies to the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, UK. The contract covers all stages of system design, manufacture and assembly of equipment, obsolescence management and maintenance support to project work and decommissioning carried out by Sellafield.
Dechra confirmed the completion of the acquisition of the entire share capital of Laboratorios Vencofarma do Brasil Ltda (Venco), based in Londrina, Brazil on Tuesday, for total consideration of BRR 185m (£37.8m). The FTSE 250 company said Venco had a “large portfolio£ of vaccines and other food-producing animal products which it sold predominantly within Brazil. It said the acquisition provided it with a “strategically significant” presence within the rapidly growing Brazilian and South American markets.
Oil services engineer Petrofac said it was trading in line with expectations for the calendar year. New order intake has grown to $5.0bn so far in 2018, up from $3.3bn at the half-year stage.
Newspaper round-up
House prices will stagnate in 2019 and the number of sales fall as a mixture of Brexit and affordability constraints takes its toll on the property market, according to Britain’s surveyors and valuers. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) said it expected the number of house sales to fall back by 5% to around 1.15m compared with 2018. The number of sales will remain sharply below the 1.7m that changed hands in the peak year of 2006. – Guardian
The big four accounting groups - KPMG, Deloitte, PwC and EY - have escaped the threat of a breakup after the competition regulator stopped short of calling for radical action against them. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) proposed instead that audits of the UK’s biggest companies, listed on the FTSE 350, should be carried out by at least two firms, one of which should be from outside the big four. The proposals came as an independent review called for the abolition of the accounting industry’s “weak” regulator, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), amid accusations that it has been too cosy with firms it is meant to regulate. – Guardian
Google has all but shut down plans to launch a censored search engine in China following months of criticism over the secretive project, according to reports. The company has blocked access to an internal system it was using to build the proposed search engine, a move that effectively renders the “Dragonfly” project closed, according to investigative news website The Intercept. – Telegraph
Mark Zuckerberg is on track to end the year $16bn (£13bn) poorer than he was when it began, after Facebook's toughest year to date sent shares in the company plunging. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Mr Zuckerberg's net worth currently stands at $57bn. That still makes him the sixth richest person in the world, but Mr Zuckerberg began the year with a net worth of $73bn. By the middle of July, his fortune had swelled to $82bn. – Telegraph
Malaysia has brought criminal charges against Goldman Sachs for allegedly paying bribes and colluding in the theft of billions of dollars in a scheme said to have been masterminded by the country’s previous prime minister. Three subsidiaries of the investment bank, including its British operation, and two former employees are accused of misappropriating $2.7 billion, bribing officials and lying to investors. The alleged crimes arose from a series of sales of government bonds organised by Goldman for the government of Najib Razak. – The Times
US close
US stocks ended the session as it started on Monday - in the red - as investors eyed the latest policy announcement from the Federal Reserve due later this week amid expectations of a 25 basis points rate hike.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2.11% at 23,592.98, the S&P 500 slid 2.08% to 2,545.94, and the Nasdaq 100 lost 2.22% to 6,448.39.
On Friday, stocks on Wall Street closed at their lowest level since April following the release of weak Chinese industrial production and retail sales data for November.
With losses from the opening bell on Monday, the Dow Jones extend its worst December opening in 38 years.
“The Fed decision on Wednesday is another event that could shake things up in the markets,” said Oanda analyst Craig Erlam.