Government stake in Lloyds falls below 6%, William Hill profit hit by 'unfavourable' sport results
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 34 points higher on Monday, after closing up 0.2% at 7,210.05 on Friday.
Stocks to watch
The UK government announced on Monday that its stake in Lloyds Banking Group fell below 6% after it sold 700m shares late on Friday. UK Financial Investments Limited, the government vehicle setup to control stakes in the banks bailed out during the credit crunch in 2008, now holds a 5.95% stake in Lloyds, down from 43% at its peak.
William Hill has warned that its full-year operating profit for 2016 will be at the bottom end of its guided range due to unfavourable football and horseracing results in December. While it was good news for punters, the bookmaker said it meant gross win margins since mid-November were below expectations.
Centamin announced its preliminary production results for the quarter to 31 December from its Sukari Gold Mine in Egypt on Monday, with total gold production for the period of 136,787 ounces - an 8% decrease on the previous quarter and a 16% increase on Q4 2015. The FTSE 250 firm said that brought full year production to 551,036 ounces, a 25% increase on 2015 and above the guidance range of between 520,000 and 540,000 ounces. Quarterly throughput at the process plant was 2,948kt, a 5% increase on the previous quarter.
FTSE 250 oil and gas facility builder Petrofac has signed a contract worth about $600m with Salalah LPG SFZCO, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oman Oil Facilities Development Company, to undertake the engineering, procurement and construction of its Salalah LPG extraction project in the southern part of Oman. Under the terms of the 36-month contract, Petrofac's scope of work will include construction of the liquefied petroleum gas unit and associated facilities, including tie-ins to existing pipeline infrastructure, together with LPG storage and jetty facilities at the Port of Salalah.
Swiss Iron ore miner Ferrexpo, which has assets in Ukraine, achieved record sales volumes in 2016, but produced lower pellets as it focused on reducing its debt.Last year the miner made record sales volumes of about 11.7m tonnes compared to 11.3m tonnes in 2015, due to “strong” demand for its pellets, while production for pellets fell to 11.2m tonnes from 11.7m tonnes.
Newspaper round-up
Shoppers and business owners have signalled confidence in spending more, suggesting the credit-fuelled growth seen in late 2016 is showing few signs of flagging. Consumer spending on credit and debt cards rose 2.6pc during last year, with higher spending both online and in bricks-and-mortar retailers, according to figures from Visa. - Telegraph
The war chest to protect the pound in the face of a sterling crisis has shrunk since June’s referendum to leave the European Union. Official figures show that the government’s stock of foreign currency reserves has declined by $5 billion in five months, or about 5 per cent, the largest and most sustained fall this decade. - The Times
British factory bosses are downbeat about the outlook for the economy after last year's Brexit vote even though they expect their sales both at home and abroad to improve in 2017, an industry survey showed on Monday. An annual survey by manufacturing association EEF showed 47 percent of executives in the sector predicted a decline in Britain's economic fortunes this year, up from 28 percent in the same survey in 2016. - Daily Mail
US close
Wall Street´s main indices finished the session uniformly higher on Friday despite a slightly weaker than forecast jobs report for the month of December, but the 20,000-point level on the Dow Jones Industrials remained unbreached by the closing bell.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.32% to 19,963.80, the S&P 500 was up 0.39% or 7.98 points to 2,276.98 and the Nasdaq was 0.60% or 33.12 points higher to 5,521.06.
At one point in the session the Dow Jones Industrials rose as high as 19,999.63, later falling back but even so ending the week up by 1%, while the S&P 500 added 1.7%.
Real estate and healthcare stocks paced the weekly advance, rising by 3% and 2.6%, respectively.
Meanwhile, oil prices edged higher as Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi started to cut supplies. West Texas Intermediate moved up by 26 cents to $53.99.