Weekly review

The FTSE 100 ended the week down 202.13 points at 6778.11.

Equity view

Unilever struck a deal to buy Horlicks and other nutrition brands listed in India and Bangladesh from GlaxoSmithKline for roughly £3.1bn.

GlaxoSmithKline also agreed to buy US-based oncology-focused pharmaceutical group Tesaro Inc for around $5.1bn (£4bn).

Ted Baker shares tumbled on Monday as it said it will launch an investigation following a petition from its staff over a culture of "forced hugs" at the company, with founder and chief executive officer Ray Kelvin under fire for his behaviour.

Royal Dutch Shell plans to set short-term climate targets as part of a long-term ambition to reduce the net carbon footprint of its energy products.

Ryanair confirmed that it has signed a framework agreement with the German pilot union, Vereinigung Cockpit, on Tuesday.

Grocers including Tesco, Morrisons, Lidl and Waitrose have warned antitrust regulators that the proposed £12bn merger between Asda and Sainsbury’s would severely affect the competition in the supermarket sector.

Travis Perkins has lifted the lid on its new strategy, including improving returns in the general merchanting division over the medium-term, and strengthening the performance of its Wickes chain and selling off its Plumbing & Heating division in the short-term.

Plumbing and heating products distributor Ferguson reported a 9.9% rise in first quarter trading profit to $432m as North American operations offset a fall in the UK.

The IWGB union lost its fight to win bargaining rights for gig economy riders who work for Deliveroo on Wednesday after its bid was dismissed by the High Court.

Wood Group said it had been awarded a $43m contract by an unnamed large-cap midstream company to construct 80 miles of steel pipeline in west Texas.

BT is stripping Huawei equipment from its existing 3G and 4G mobile network, according to reports on Wednesday, with the company saying it was not going to use equipment from the Chinese manufacturer in its next-generation 5G network.

Takeda Pharmaceutical's £46bn takeover of London-listed pharmaceutical group Shire has been approved by both sets of shareholders on Wednesday.

Two former Tesco directors have been acquitted of charges of fraud and false accounting after their case was dismissed after eight weeks due to a lack of evidence.

Just Eat will be demoted from the FTSE 100 along with Royal Mail when the quarterly index reshuffle is completed later this month, resulting in Hiscox and Spirax-Sarco Engineering making their debuts on the blue chip benchmark.

AstraZeneca has completed a $350m agreement with Covis Pharma to sell its rights to the medicines Alvesco (ciclesonide), used for the treatment of persistent asthma, and Omnaris and Zetonna (ciclesonide), used for the treatment of nasal symptoms associated with rhinitis.

The O2 network has suffered an outage leaving millions of UK customers without data service due to third-party equipment, according to the Telefonica-owned company.

Investment platform AJ Bell on Friday reached an issue price of 160p per share for its upcoming initial public offering, giving the group a market capitalisation of approximately £651m from day one.

RELX announced the completion of its £700m share buyback programme for 2018, which was intended to reduce the capital of the company, with the board intending that shares purchased would be held in treasury.

Berkeley Group posted a drop in half-year profit on Friday as Brexit uncertainty took its toll, but lifted its profit forecast for the full year.

Associated British Foods said that its Primark retail arm endured a "challenging" period of trading last month but expectations for annual profits growth remain unchanged.

Economic news

The government was under pressure from Labour to publish the full legal advice paper on the Brexit deal or face a “constitutional crisis”, as a draft of the report was leaked on Monday morning revealing no end date for backstop arrangement.

The manufacturing sector saw a slight rebound in activity in November, data showed on Monday, but optimism for the future sank to fresh lows as Brexit uncertainties weighed heavily.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May suffered three parliamentary defeats on Tuesday night as MPs started a marathon session of debates on her wobbling Brexit deal.

Over one in five of the UK population live in poverty, including 8m who live in families where at least one person is in work, said the latest report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The services sector saw growth slow to its weakest level for more than two years in November, as concerns over Brexit weighed on the economy and curtailed business and consumer spending.

Sales of new cars fell in November, as supply constraints and faltering consumer confidence put the brakes on the industry.

Black Friday failed to lift the UK’s beleaguered high street, research published on Thursday showed, with retail sales falling nearly 3% in November.

Meanwhile, another study showed that restaurants are closing at the rate of more than ten a week in Britain as the sector battles over-supply and stiff competition.

Prominent pro-Brexit campaigners are reported to be quietly preparing for a second referendum, according to MPs and activists.

House prices dropped much more than expected last month, with annual growth falling to a six-year low as political and economic uncertainty ramped up.

International events

Qatar plans to pull out of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in January, the country's energy minister warned on Monday.

Manufacturing remained stable in China in November, although the simmering trade war between Washington and Beijing continued to dent exports.

The French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced on Tuesday that a proposed fuel tax hike would be suspended after fierce protests around the country against the government's economic reforms.

A coordinated European money laundering crackdown involving police forces from 30 nations has arrested 168 people between September and November.

China expressed confidence of agreeing a trade deal with the US within 90 days of negotiations after President Donald Trump took to Twitter to warn that he was “Tariff Man” at heart.

Reports on wednesday suggested Opec was expected to cut production by more than 1m barrels per day, with investors hoping for some respite for under-pressure oil prices.

America's trade shortfall with the rest of the world widened to a 10-year high in October on the back of stronger import demand.

In a surprise development, Thursday's meeting of energy ministers from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies adjourned without a final decision on by how much to cut the group's combined crude oil output.

US non-farm payrolls rose less than expected last month, while the unemployment rate held steady, according to data released by the Labor Department on Friday.

Finally, on Friday the world's major oil producers agreed to slash their output by a tad more than had been expected following two days of talks in Vienna.