Metro Bank announces capital package, GSK enters China vaccine partnership

Stocks to watch

Metro Bank announced a capital package on Monday morning, including a £325m capital raise - encompassing £150m of new equity and £175m of new MREL issuance - and £600m of debt refinancing. The bank, which was the subject of reports of a potential refinancing last week, said it was also exploring an asset sale of up to £3bn of residential mortgages, projected to scale down risk-weighted assets by £1bn and be earnings accretive in 2024 depending on pricing.

GSK has entered into a new exclusive vaccine partnership in China that will extend the availability of its shingle vaccine Shingrix. The pharmaceutical giant is partnering with Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products (or Zhifei), China's largest vaccine company, to promote Shingrix through the latter's service network, which covers more than 30,000 vaccination points across the country. The partnership is for three years initially and will start on 1 January 2024.

Newspaper round-up

Britain’s manufacturers are urging the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, to announce a “major MOT” of the UK’s “uncompetitive” business tax and regulatory system in his autumn statement next month. Many aspects of the system are “not fit for purpose”, the business group Make UK said in a report published in the middle of the political party conference season, and called for major reform as part of an industrial strategy. – Guardian

Three-quarters of UK firms are still struggling to recruit staff, research has found, but the post-pandemic “jobs boom” appears to be in decline, with hiring intentions continuing to fall last month. A survey by the British Chambers of Commerce found that 73% of the almost 5,000 companies it polled had faced hiring difficulties in the July to September quarter – a nine percentage point drop from the record high of 82% in the final three months of 2022. – Guardian

Europe’s money-printing spree risks triggering bailouts across the Continent as governments pay the price of a decade of cheap money. BNP Paribas warned there was a growing risk that some of the bloc’s biggest economies “may have to be recapitalised” as the European Central Bank (ECB) continues to shrink its balance sheet. - Telegraph

An executive who was appointed as global chief financial officer at EY at the start of this year has left after a plan to break up the group collapsed. Jamie Miller, who was poached in January from Cargill, the commodities trading company, was due to become finance chief of EY’s consulting business if the firm’s plan to split itself in two by demerging the unit had gone ahead. – The Times

Groceries from Waitrose could be sold via Amazon under a deal being discussed by the supermarket chain and the online retail group. Waitrose, owned by the John Lewis Partnership, is seeking to restore its shrinking market share through the tie-up after losing sales to cheaper rivals amid the cost of living crisis. – The Times

US close

Stocks staged a surprising rally on Friday, quickly erasing early losses after non-farm payrolls figures blew forecasts out of the water.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 0.9%, while the S&P 500 gained 1.2% and the Nasdaq jumped 1.6%.

According to the Department of Labor, non-farm payrolls surged by 336,000 last month, double what economists had pencilled in (170,000).

That was on top of upwards revisions to figures for the previous two months by a combined 119,000.

The unemployment rate was unchanged on the prior month at 3.8%, slightly higher than the consensus estimate of 3.7%.