Weekly Review

The FTSE 100 closed the week up 71.23 points at 7,031.72.

Equity view

Babcock posted a 47% rise in annual pre-tax profit for the year to £313.1m, with revenue up 37% on the year at £4.5bn, boosted by acquisitions and contract wins.

Online gaming group Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment confirmed it has received a cash and shares bid from sector peer 888 Holdings.

Rolls-Royce Holdings is set to cut 600 jobs in its marine business by the end of 2015, in a bid to reduce costs amid challenging market conditions.

British property developer Land Securities more than doubled its full-year pre-tax profit to £2.42bn, driven by a valuation surplus of £2.04bn that includes the company's proportionate share of subsidiaries and joint ventures.

Final results from Vodafone showed a return to organic growth in the fourth quarter, with organic service revenue up 0.1%, beating consensus forecasts, but an expected profits bounce from its massive Project Spring investment were largely dashed.

Bristol-based financial services provider Hargreaves Lansdown reported a record level of inflows over the first four months of 2015, helped by strong new business and client retention.

Luxury retailer Burberry cautioned that it was seeing increased uncertainty in some of its markets and warned over the potential impact of currency movements.

Profits and earnings crawled slightly higher at SSE in the full year as the utility company increased its dividend in line RPI inflation, but it warned dividend cover would fall due to the pressure of "significant uncertainties" on earnings.

After four years of trying, Marks & Spencer has finally increased its full year profits, lifting them 3.4% to £600m before tax.

Five global banks including the UK's Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland have agreed to pay over $5bn in combined fines and will plead guilty to criminal charges over the rigging of foreign exchange markets.

Royal Mail delivered a mixed bag of full year results with numbers bang in-line with expectations but lower than anticipated revenue from the core UK parcel business and continued caution about the highly competitive market.

Costa coffee shops and Premier Inns hotels owner Whitbread has appointed Alison Brittain, current head of Lloyds's high street banking division, as its new chief executive.

Economic news

Asking prices for UK homes dropped in the run-up to the elections but should recover after the Tory victory, a Rightmove survey showed. In the period between 12 April and 9 May asking prices for houses in England and Wales slipped by 0.1% month-on-month, the first retreat for that month since the run-up to the previous elections in May 2010.

UK inflation fell 0.1% in the year to April, the first annual fall in the consumer prices index since the 1960s. Data showed prices rose 9.6% in the year to March, compared to 7.4% in the year to February, driven by an 11.4% gain in East England and by an 11.2% increase in London and South East England.

UK retail sales grew faster than hoped in April, rising 1.2% on the previous month and 4.7% compared to the April last year, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Net migration reached a 10-year high in 2014, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.

The UK budget deficit narrowed in April from last year, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics. Public sector net borrowing excluding state-controlled banks fell 27% from a year earlier to £6.8bn, compared with economists’ expectations for a shortfall of £8.1b, thanks to stronger tax receipts.

International events

Ireland's Endo International is to acquire generic drugmaker Par Pharmaceutical from US Texas-based private equity firm TPG Capital in a deal worth $8.05bn.

Ann Inc, the women's apparel retailer, received a takeover offer from sector peer AscenaRetail Group worth $2bn.

German economic confidence declined more than forecast in May, ZEW's survey revealed. The economic sentiment index dropped to 41.9 in May from 53.3 a month earlier, compared to analysts' estimates of 48.

Japanese gross domestic product expanded at an annualised pace of 2.4% in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year, ended in March 2015, a preliminary estimate from the country´s Ministry of Economics revealed. The median forecast from economists was for an expansion of 1.6%.

A rate hike in June is 'unlikely', according to minutes published from the last Federal Reserve interest-rate meeting.

CVS Health Corporation, the US-listed drugstore giant, is to buy healthcare group Omnicare for $98 per share in cash, valuing the nursing home and pharmacy services company at $10.4bn.

Hewlett Packard has agreed to sell a 51% stake in its Chinese data-networking business H3C Technologies to local rival Tsinghua Unigroup for $2.3bn.