Weir wins £95m order in Australia, Pets At Home sells five specialist practices

Stocks to watch

Mining technology provider Weir Group said it had won a £95m order to provide aftermarket components and service to the Iron Bridge magnetite project in Western Australia. The project is a $2.6bn joint venture between Fortescue Metals Group's subsidiary FMG Magnetite and Formosa Steel and is located in the Pilbara region, around 145 kilometres south of Port Hedland.

Polymetal announced an initial investment of $0.5m in exchange for a 35% stake in a joint venture with a junior on Tuesday, holding an exploration licence for the Pekinskaya area in Russia’s Taimyr Peninsula, adjoining the existing Taimyr joint venture. The FTSE 100 company said it could acquire up to a 70% interest in the venture by funding RUB 173m (£1.69m) in cash of exploration expenditures in three stages aligned with the relevant field seasons.

Pets at Home said it had sold five of its specialist referral practices to Linnaeus Group for up to £100m in cash. The pet care group on Tuesday said the deal included an £80m upfront payment and the balance dependent on meeting future financial milestones. Linnaeus Group, a subsidiary of Mars Veterinary Health, operates more than 150 veterinary clinics across the UK.

Newspaper round-up

Millions of UK savers are currently on the hunt for a better deal, but the bad news is that savings rates are in turmoil. The government-backed NS&I is seeing an exodus of savers after cutting returns last week – prompting a domino effect among other providers. Financial data website Moneyfacts.co.uk said that over the past fortnight there had been a string of rate cuts to sought-after instant access accounts. - Guardian

Punters lost £700m less on gambling machines in the year after fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) were reined in but industry predictions of more than 20,000 job losses if ministers went ahead with the policy have not materialised. As the gambling regulator released fresh data charting the impact of curbs on the roulette machines, campaigners said the figures showed that ministers poised to launch a wide-ranging review of gambling laws should beware industry forecasts. - Guardian

Sir Philip Green's stricken retail empire crashed into administration on Monday evening, leaving thousands of pension savers at risk of a brutal hit to their retirement income and putting 13,000 jobs at risk. Administrators at Deloitte were formally appointed after last-ditch efforts to save the business failed in the most high-profile corporate collapse to hit the British high street since Covid-19 struck. - Telegraph

HM Revenue & Customs missed out by a matter of hours from becoming a key creditor in the collapse of Arcadia. A change in the rules coming into force today will see the partial return of “crown preference”, in which HMRC moves up the repayment queue in insolvencies. Under the new system, which took effect shortly after Arcadia had collapsed into administration, VAT and payroll taxes will sit above “floating charge” creditors and unsecured creditors, such as suppliers and pension funds, in the repayments queue when companies fail. - The Times

Fifty-three years ago this month Olympia put itself firmly on the live music map when it hosted a now-legendary all-night event starring, among others, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and the Who. Today the west London venue will be the headline act in its own right when AEG, operator of the O2 Arena in Greenwich, southeast London, is announced as one of the first tenants of the £1.3 billion redevelopment of the 14-acre Olympia site. - The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks closed firmly in the red on Monday following a record-setting Thanksgiving week.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.91% at 29,638.64, while the S&P 500 was 0.46% weaker at 3,621.63 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.06% softer at 12,198.74.

The Dow closed 271.73 points lower on Monday, reversing gains recorded in Friday's holiday-shortened session but still leaving the blue-chip index firmly on track for its best month since 1987.

Investors continued to monitor the heightened level of new Covid-19 cases across the US, with 13.0m confirmed cases and the coronavirus now having claimed the lives of more than 266,000 Americans, according to Johns Hopkins University, roughly four-and-a-half times the number of US lives lost as a result of the Vietnam War.

Infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci cautioned on Sunday that the US was now heading into an even more difficult period as far as the pandemic was concerned, one in which restrictions and travel advisories would be necessary, warning the country would see a "surge upon a surge" over Christmas.