Sage agrees to sell Brazil business, Hiscox earnings slide in 2019

Stocks to watch

NMC Health said it had has hired investment bank Moelis to advise on a debt restructuring and asked lenders for an informal “standstill” from lenders to stabilise the troubled company's finances. “The informal standstill includes a request to lenders not to exercise any rights and remedies that may arise from any current or future defaults under the group's finance documentation,” the company said on Monday.

Sage said it has agreed to sell its Brazilian business to local management for up to £10m. The software company had already announced in its full-year results in November that it was holding the business for sale. The group said the sale was part of its strategy to focus on subscription software solutions that are in or have a pathway to the Sage Business Cloud. The deal is expected to complete within the next two months.

Hiscox reported an 8.1% rise in gross premiums written in its full-year results on Monday, to $4.03bn (£3.14bn) in constant currency, after “disciplined action” to reduce $200m in underperforming lines. The FTSE 250 insurer said group profits were impacted by large catastrophe events, with $165m reserved for Hurricane Dorian and Typhoons Faxai and Hagibis, in addition to $25m of reduced fees and profit commissions. Its profit before tax fell to $53.1m for 2019, from $135.6m, while earnings per share slid to 17.2 cents from 41.6 cents.

Newspaper round-up

The Bank of England carried out due diligence three times on a firm that was subsequently revealed to have given paying clients early access to market-sensitive information without the Bank’s knowledge. Bank officials scrutinised the technology supplier Encoded Media three times between 2008, when it first became a technology supplier to the Bank, and 2019, the Guardian can reveal. However, Encoded’s status as a supplier to the Bank was only revoked following media inquiries in December. – Guardian

The chancellor is planning to scrap a £3bn tax relief that mainly benefits the wealthy in a bid to raise cash for an expected increase in public spending in the budget on 11 March. Rishi Sunak is expected to target entrepreneurs’ relief, a tax break which halves the capital gains tax paid when people sell their businesses. Under current rules, sellers pay only 10% on lifetime gains of up to £10m, comparedwith the 20% capital gains tax paid by higher-rate taxpayers. – Guardian

The private jets trips previously enjoyed by Metro Bank founder Vernon Hill are no longer going to fly with the bank’s board as the embattled lender fights to clean up its image. Sources said the chairman picked to replace Mr Hill, who has left the board after an accounting scandal triggered a lengthy sell-off and an emergency fundraising, will not enjoy the same perks as the American multi-millionaire. – Telegraph

Thousands of former Northern Rock shareholders are planning to restart their fight for compensation after the nationalised bank was left with £5 billion in surplus equity having repaid its government loans in full. Dennis Grainger, chairman of the Northern Rock Small Shareholder Action Group, said that he would be writing to the prime minister and to the chancellor to recover the excess profits made by the Treasury from the bank’s 2008 nationalisation. – The Times

About 500 staff and 20 partners are leaving KPMG in a £200 million leveraged buyout of its pension consulting business that will be announced today. The move involving the pensions division, which has advised a third of FTSE 100 companies in recent years, is being backed by Exponent, a private equity group. It was prompted by concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Pension trustee clients were unhappy in cases where either the pension fund or the sponsoring employer was also audited by KPMG. The division, to be renamed Isio, is understood to bring in £50 million to £100 million per year. – The Times

US close

US stocks turned in a somewhat mixed performance on Friday, with the Dow Jones and S&P 500 registering their worst weekly performances since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.39% at 25,409.36, while the S&P 500 was 0.82% softer at 2,954.22 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session mostly flat - up 0.01% at 8,567.37.

The Dow closed 357.28 points lower on Friday, after recording its biggest one-day decline in history in the previous session as major indices dipped into correction territory while the Wuhan coronavirus continued to spread and some more big names warned on guidance.

The benchmark US 10-year Treasury yield was at a fresh record low of 1.167% at the open as concerns about the coronavirus and its impact on the global economy continued to weigh on investor sentiment.

As far as the virus was concerned, New Zealand and Nigeria both reported their first cases overnight, while South Korea confirmed more than 500 new cases and China reported 327 more.