Sports Direct in talks with BHS, Vodafone's m-pesa growing fast

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to gain by a tentative 3 points on Monday morning, making a small move to erase some of the losses from the end of last week.

Stocks to watch

UK retailer BHS was expected to file for administration on Monday, putting almost 11,000 jobs at risk unless a deal can be done with discount retailer Sports Direct. Mike Ashley's FTSE 250 group had been in talks with BHS owners Retail Acquisitions to buy some of BHS's 164 stores, however buyers have been put off by the company's £571m pension deficit.

Vodafone's mobile money transfer business has exceeded 25m active users across Africa, Asia and Europe. The FTSE 100 mobile giant said active customer numbers increased by 27.1% in the year ended 31 March 2016, boosted by market launches in Albania and Ghana and supported by a network of more than 261,000 agents across 11 countries.

US technology spin-out company Allied Minds reported a wider loss in 2015 that it blamed on an increase in its investment in research and development and the creation of four new businesses during the year. The FTSE 250 firm posted a net loss of $97.9m (£67.8m) to 31 December, up 69% from $57.9m in 2014. Its net cash and investments decreased to $194.8m, from $261.5m, while revenues at the group gell to $3.3m from $7.7m.

Newspaper round-up

For almost 150 years Goldman Sachs has been the go-to bank of the rich and powerful. But now the Wall Street titan is opening up to the masses on Main Street by offering online savings accounts for as little as $1 on deposit. Goldman’s shift down market comes as the bank is under pressure to develop new streams of funding. – Financial Times

Barack Obama and Angela Merkel have called for talks over a transatlantic trade deal to be completed this year as fears mount that the opportunity to reach an agreement is slipping away. The US president used a visit to Hanover in Germany on Sunday to try to breathe new life into the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which has been beset by political opposition in the US and Europe. – Financial Times

Bob Diamond has teamed up with a major private equity firm as he attempts to develop plans to mount a bid for the African operations of Barclays, the bank he ran until four years ago. In linking with US-based Carlyle, Diamond will be hoping to start to amass the financial fire power needed to bid for the business in Africa that Barclays is selling. – Guardian

Company chiefs should be forced to disclose how many times larger their pay packets are than the average of their employees, one of Britain’s biggest investment institutions has argued. Legal & General has called for pay ratios to become mandatory at UK listed companies as investors redouble efforts to curb escalating boardroom pay levels. – The Times

US close

Traders pushed technology stocks lower at the end of the week, with giants Microsoft and Google left nursing heavy falls in their share price after their latest quarterly earnings came in wide of the mark.

Acting as a backdrop, investors were also digesting big moves in foreign exchange markets ahead of next week's US and Japanese central bank policy meetings.

The yen plummeted by over 2.0% against sterling and the greenback after Bloomberg reported the Bank of Japan might begin to pay banks for them to extend credit.