Hiscox warns of coronavirus payouts, Johnson Matthey declines government support

Stocks to watch

Hiscox said it could pay out $175m in coronavirus-related claims if lockdowns and travel bans were extended beyond August. The insurer on Wednesday added that “a number” of UK policyholders had disputed the application of their policy in relation to business interruption cover.

Johnson Matthey's board are donating a fifth of their salaries to science education and declining government support for furloughed staff for the first quarter of the company's financial year.

CRH reported a “positive start” to the year on Wednesday, with first quarter like-for-like sales ahead 3%, though it said the impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic had been visible since mid-March. The FTSE 100 company said its 2020 outlook was now uncertain, and could not be reasonably estimated, but noted it was in a “strong” financial position, with more than $6bn of cash and cash equivalents. It said the final dividend of 63 euro cents was still being proposed for shareholder approval at the annual general meeting on Thursday.

Newspaper round-up

More than 70% of private firms have furloughed staff in response to the coronavirus lockdown, according to the latest survey of Britain’s struggling business sector. The British Chamber of Commerce said responses to its weekly Covid-19 tracker poll revealed the proportion of firms that have furloughed at least some staff increased to 71% this week, from 66% last week. - Guardian

Commercial property landlords are starting to tighten the screw on retailers including Boots and Matalan for failing to pay overdue rent, in some cases starting legal action to reclaim money they are owed. Boots, which has continued to trade throughout the lockdown, has been criticised with other businesses, including Travelodge, for refusing to pay second quarter rent, which was due at the end of March. – Guardian

Inflation slipped lower in March on the back of falling clothes and motor fuel prices, official figures show. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the rate of Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation decreased to 1.5pc in March. Analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics predicted that the headline rate of inflation would slow to 1.6pc. - Telegraph

The Treasury is under growing pressure to expand its employee bailout scheme as the number of people on taxpayer-funded leave climbed to 1.3 million. A total of 185,000 firms applied to furlough their workers by the end of the first day of the scheme’s operation, HMRC figures showed, as it emerged that three in five businesses have less than three months of cash in reserve. – Telegraph

More than 1.5 million people have applied for universal credit since social distancing measures were introduced a month ago, underscoring the scale of the crisis in jobs and incomes. The increase since March 16 has been six times as large as the normal average of 235,000 a month. There was a huge take-up in the ten days after that date, when claims rose to 950,000, almost ten times as many as there are normally in a two-week period. – The Times

Councils that have failed to distribute billions of pounds of emergency grants have been accused of “inexcusable” delays that are putting companies’ survival at risk. Figures show that some local authorities have managed to deliver only about a tenth of the funds meant to provide a cash lifeline to businesses hit by the fallout from coronavirus. – The Times

US close

US stocks finished sharply lower on Tuesday, as the week's historic oil sell-off showed no signs of slowing down.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the session down 2.67% at 23,018.88, the S&P 500 lost 3.07% to 2,736.56, and the Nasdaq Composite was 3.48% weaker at 8,263.23.

At the open, the Dow had lost 401 points following a near 600-point drop in the previous session, as a sharp decline in US crude oil prices raised questions about just how deep the quarter's economic slowdown will be.

Market participants remained focussed on the strange happenings with oil once again on Tuesday after May contracts for oil futures fell to a negative price - meaning producers would actually pay for someone to take the oil from them.

June futures for West Texas Intermediate were last down 55.24% at $13.16 per barrel.

Donald Trump told the Secretaries of Energy and Treasury to put together a plan aimed at making financial relief available to US oil and gas developers in order to secure the future of the "very important companies and jobs".