Weekly Review

The FTSE 100 finished the week 171.22 points lower at 6,740.58.

Equity view

WPP, the world's biggest advertising company, recorded a £1.5bn annual profit in 2014 and kicked off 2015 on a strong note.

The British government has sold £500m worth of shares in Lloyds Banking Group, bringing its stake in the bank down from 40% to 22.8%.

Credit Suisse has poached Prudential's boss Tidjane Thiam to replace long-standing chief executive Brady Dougan as chief executive.

Copper mining group Antofagasta has been told by a court that it must destroy at least part of its tailings dam at the Los Pelambres project in Chile as it is affecting the natural flow of a nearby river. However, the miner did manage to agree to resolve protests at the mine that have been going on over the last two weeks.

BHP Billiton unveiled a record production of 124m tonnes in the first half of its financial year and said it's on track to deliver 245m tonnes for the full year ending 30 June 2015.

Security group G4S, reported a better-than-expected rise in pre-tax profits in 2014 but raised provisions for underperforming UK government contracts by £45m as it continues to recover from reputational damage following scandals.

Tesco has enjoyed its strongest performance in 18 months with sales up 1.1% in the past 12 weeks, as the industry price war created record levels of deflation, according to fresh data from Kantar Worldpanel.

N Brown has warned of a lower-than-expected product gross margin percentage for the full year, the retailer's second profit warning in six months.

Japan-based office equipment supplier Brother Industries has agreed to acquire British printing technology company Domino Printing Sciences for £1.03bn.

Like-for-like sales improved in the fourth quarter at Morrisons but the grocer reported a £792m loss before tax for 2014 as it wrote down the value of its stores by £1.3bn and announced 23 closures.

Recently floated TSB has received a cash takeover approach from Spain's Banco Sabadell, which TSB's majority owner Lloyds said it would accept.

After unveiling $2bn of impairment charges for its upcoming 2014 results, Afren has entered into a funding agreement with its lenders that will result in "substantial dilution" for existing shareholders.

Economic news

UK retail sales bounced 0.2% higher in February after their January fall, though the wider economic recovery "is bypassing the sector", the British Retail Consortium and KPMG said.

UK factory output slipped 0.1% on the month in January and rose 1.3% in year-over-year terms, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The UK economy maintained its rate of expansion over the three months to February, growing by 0.6%, according to the NIESR.

The UK visible trade balance registered an unexpectedly large improvement at the start of the year, with the deficit shrinking to £8.4bn from a revised £9.9bn.

UK construction output unexpectedly fell 2.6% at the start of the year led by a drop in public housing.

International events

China's trade surplus rose to a new record high in February with exports rising sharply and imports declining at a faster pace than in the previous month.

Investor confidence in the Eurozone reached its highest level since August 2007 in March, according to a report by market research group Sentix.

Technology group Apple unveiled details about its Apple Watch, a new MacBook and several other nuggets at an event in San Francisco on Monday.

A raft a Chinese economic data came in weaker than expected: Chinese fixed asset investment, retail sales and industrial production all grew less than forecast in February, with the latter coming in at its slowest pace in nearly six years.

Consumer inflation in China rebounded last month from a five-year low in January, but producer prices remained in deflation, raising the prospects of further stimulus measures by the country's central bank.

Intel warned that its first-quarter sales would be lower than expected, citing weaker demand for business desktop PCs and lower inventory levels in the PC supply chain.

As it restarts technical talks with its troika of lenders, Greece has thrown a spanner in the diplomatic works with renewed threats to seize German assets as means of claiming reparations for Nazi occupation in World War II.

The International Monetary Fund approved a $17.5bn loan programme for Ukraine, to fund defences against pro-Russia rebel advances.

US retail sales declined for the third month in a row in February, as Americans continued to shy back from spending the money saved by the slump in gasoline prices.