WS Atkins paying £35m into pension fund, DCC to buy Shell Asia LPG business
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 25 points higher on Wednesday, after closing up 0.54% at 7,321.82 on Tuesday.
Stocks to watch
Design, engineering and project management consultancy WS Atkins said it would pay £34.5m into its pension fund in the current financial year after it revealed a deficit of £318m. In a statement, Atkins said it had agreed with the fund's trustees to increase payments by 2.5% a year as part of a repayment plan to 2025.
Irish services group DCC announced it is to buy Royal Dutch Shell's liquefied petroleum gas business in Hong Kong and Macau for about £120m (HK$1.16bn), subject to regulatory consent. The FTSE 100 company’s acquisition from Shell Gas (LPG) Holdings is expected to complete by the end of March 2018.
Retirement housebuilder McCarthy & Stone bumped up its interim dividend 80% as it reported a 42% slump in underlying profits for the first half of the year but its confidence in hitting full year targets. Furthermore, with FTSE 250 company enjoying a strong period of planning consents and it not only began building activity on 44 new sites by the end of March, up from 34 a year before, it also expected a further 16 or so by the end of the current quarter to enable it to double the number of sales releases in the 2018 financial year.
Medical technology company ConvaTec Group announced the US launch of ‘Foam Lite’ ConvaTec dressing on Wednesday, which it described as a light, flexible silicone foam dressing for managing low to non-exuding chronic and acute wounds. The FTSE 100 firm said the launch of ‘Foam Lite’ stateside continued the company's expansion into large, growing segments of advanced wound care, beginning with the successful launch of ‘AQUACEL’ foam dressing into the $1.2bn foam market, and most recently with the European launch of the ‘Avelle’ negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) system into the fast-growing disposable segment of the NPWT market.
Newspaper round-up
Up to 100 people were killed and hundreds injured yesterday in the deadliest nerve-gas attack in Syria in four years, prompting international condemnation of President Assad’s regime. Witnesses said that missiles filled with sarin nerve gas were fired by planes into Khan Sheikhoun, a frontline town in rebel-held Idlib province, early yesterday, suffocating civilians as they slept. - The Times
The future of an estimated 100,000 jobs has been plunged into doubt after a close political ally of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, warned that a prized sector in the City of London, euro-denominated clearing, must relocate to EU soil after Brexit. - The Guardian
One is an automotive titan that has built more than 350m vehicles in an illustrious history spanning more than a century. The other is less than 15 years old and has never made a profit. And yet a 7% surge in the value of shares in electric car firm Tesla on Monday saw it zoom ahead of Ford Motor Company, in terms of its stock market value. As Wall Street closed for the day, Tesla, led by 45-year-old tycoon and futurist Elon Musk, was worth $49bn (£38bn), compared with a paltry $46bn for the empire built by Henry Ford. - The Guardian
President Trump’s naval commander for Asia warned yesterday that there would be no easy victory in a war with North Korea, and that the economic damage would be felt across the world. Admiral Scott Swift, head of the US Pacific Fleet, spoke after Mr Trump gave his strongest hint that he was contemplating military action over the nuclear and missile programmes embarked upon by the Kim regime. - The Times
US close
US stocks finished just above the waterline on Tuesday as investors geared up for the first bilateral meeting between President Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 0.19% 20,689.24, the S&P 500 added 0.06% to 2,360.16, and the Nasdaq 100 was 0.15% higher at 5,440.41.
Investors were holding out making big investments as they looked ahead to Thursday’s summit at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida where the two leaders are expected to talk about trade and reigning in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
Trump has already tweeted that he expects the meeting to be “very difficult” as the US can no longer have “massive trade deficits”.
During the presidential campaign he railed against the US’s $500bn yearly trade deficit, which China contributes more than $300bn to, and called China a currency manipulator.
Trade balance figures released on Tuesday revealed that that US trade fell sharply in February as imports from China fell and exports rose for a third straight month.