Weekly review

The FTSE 100 ended the week up 85.3 points to 6,117.76 points.

Equity view

Shares in office retail giant Regus were up 10% after a report the company could be the subject of a multi-billion pound bid from a major private equity firm.

Full-year pre-tax profits fell 2% to £77.8m at pub group JD Wetherspoon as the company continued to battle competition from supermarkets and restaurant groups.

British American Tobacco’s Brazilian-controlled company has launched a public tender offer to buy up to all of the 24.7% of Souza Cruz it does not already own, and to delist the group from the stock exchange.

John Lewis posted a 26% drop in first-half pre-tax profit as the company was hit by supermarket price wars and higher pension charges.

Royal Bank of Scotland has entered into a definitive agreement to sell a portfolio of corporate loan commitments related to its Chinese banking business to China Construction Bank Corporation for around £498m.

Centamin on Thursday said the fall in fuel prices has had a “positive impact” on the reserve estimate at the Sukari mine in Egypt.

Clothing retailer Next reported a 7.1% jump in first-half pre-tax profit, with revenue up as the company sold more items at full price than it had expected.

Home Retail Group said like-for-like sales at Argos fell 2.8% to £897m in the second quarter due to a drop in sales of electrical goods driven by TVs, tablets and white goods. Total Argos sales fell 0.4%.

Dunelm posted a rise in full-year profit as revenue grew strongly and the homeware retailer boosted its final dividend.

Significant market share gains in mobile phones have lifted first quarter like-for-like revenues at Dixons Carphone by 8%, the company said in a trading statement.

Hargreaves Lansdown posted a 5% drop in operating profit for the year ended 30 June, although revenue nudged up, assets under administration rose 18% and the company boosted its dividend.

Ryanair raised its full year net profit outlook by a quarter after the budget airline's traffic and profits took off in the first quarter.

Letting franchise group Belvoir Lettings said its interim profit slid, as a market slowdown had a negative impact on revenue.

Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment said that further to its takeover agreement with GVC Holdings last week, the company has terminated discussions with 888 Holdings.

RSA Insurance has signed contracts to sell its operations in Latin America to Suramericana SA, which is the insurance subsidiary of Grupo de Inversiones Suramericana, for around £403m in cash.

Private equity firms have reportedly abandoned their offers for Tesco’s data arm, Dunnhumby, after the retailer struck a deal with the unit that raised concerns over financing.

Total sales grew by 11.1% at Costa coffee shops and Premier Inns owner Whitbread in the second quarter as like-for-like sales advanced 3.3%.

Low-cost airline Fastjet carried a record number of passengers in August as it benefited from new routes to Malawi and increased frequency on some existing routes.

Betting companies Paddy Power and Betfair have reached an agreement on a £5bn all-share merger.

Pub operator and brewer Greene King posted an increase in like-for-like sales in the first 18 weeks of its financial year, helped by solid growth across all of its divisions.

Economic news

British consumers’ inflation expectations dipped in August as an increasing number of people began to anticipate a rise in interest rates.

According to the Office for National Statistics, output in the UK’s construction industry fell 1% month-on-month in July compared with a 0.9% increase in the previous month, while analysts expected a 0.5% gain.

Recent ructions in global capital markets and heightened uncertainty around the Chinese economy turned the Monetary Policy Committee modestly more cautious, the minutes of Thursday’s policy meeting revealed.

The Monetary Policy Committee kept Bank Rate unchanged at 0.50% and the size of its asset purchase facility at £375bn, both as expected by analysts.

UK house price growth remained strong in August as the lack of second-hand homes pushed prices higher, according to Halifax.

A separate survey from RICS has predicted house in prices in Britain will be 6% higher at the end of the year than they were in January.

Oil and gas production from Britain’s waters was set to increase in 2015 for the first time in fifteen years, with operating costs set to fall sharply too, albeit alongside exploration budgets, the sector’s leading industrial body said in a report.

Britain’s total trade balance widened in July, figures released on Wednesday showed.

International events

Chinese authorities are considering funnelling up to 1.5trn yuan ($16bn) into the economy in a bid to prop up growth, according to state media Xinhua.

The flow of credit in the People’s Republic of China accelerated in August, the latest figures published by Beijing revealed according to analysts.

Richard Fisher, the former president of the Dallas Federal Reserve, said the US central bank should start to “slow the engines of the economy”.

The number of people who filed for US unemployment benefits was in line with expectations in the first week of September, the Labor Department said.

US job openings surged past expectations in July, another report revealed.

The unemployment rate in Greece nudged up in June, according to figures released by national statistics agency ELSTAT. The seasonally-adjusted jobless rate rose to 25.2% from 25% in May, remaining at record highs but down from 26.6% in the same month last year.

Figures released on Thursday showed the producer price index in China fell 5.9% in August compared with a 5.4% drop in July - its biggest decline since 2009 and a clear indication that deflation in the world’s second-largest economy remains a risk.

There is a 55% chance of some kind of global recession in the next two years or so, originating in emerging markets and China, according to Citigroup.

China is set to roll out a “more forceful” fiscal policy to address the slowdown in the world’s second largest economy, the finance ministry said on Wednesday.

The World Bank joined the International Monetary Fund late on Tuesday in warning the US central bank not to raise interest rates when it next meets in September.

Goldman Sachs cut its 2016 Brent oil price forecast to $49.5 a barrel from $62 and warned there is a risk prices could fall to as low as $20, noting that OPEC production has surprised sharply on the upside and Iran has the potential to ramp up in 2016.