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Friday's news and tips

Created:

27 November 2009

Written by:

ShareCast

■ Mobile phone retailer and broadband provider Carphone Warehouse has raised its full-year guidance after posting better-than-expected half-year figures.

■ Holidaybreak, the old Eurocamp, has suffered a big drop in full-year profit, but the firm's education business had better results.

■ Recession has meant less need for business travel, which hit agent Hogg Robinson in the first half with profits almost halving.

■ Respiratory inhaler firm Vectura reported a 67 per cent reduction in half-year pre-tax losses and said it plans to establish an infrastructure in the US market.

■ Vending machine operator SnackTime said it is placing 3.4m new shares at a price of 170p per share to raise about £5.8m.

■ Battered bus and train operator National Express has won the backing of shareholders to go ahead with its £360m rights issue.

■ Pre-tax profit more than halved at IT solutions provider Electronic Data Processing, slumping to £0.46m in the half year to 30 September, from £1.07m the year before.

Continues below...

■ Property asset manager Capital & Regional said its Mall Fund has sold Bexleyheath Shopping Centre to LaSalle Investment Management for £97.9m including a sum of £3.3m conditional upon achieving rental uplifts on certain lease renewals.

■ Lloyds Banking is to ask local courts to dismiss thousands of claims for the return of unauthorised overdraft fees.

■ Equipment rental group VP saw profits fall in the six months to September 30, but said its exposure to niche markets helped it mitigate the impact of the economic downturn.

■ Meatpacker Hilton Food, which supplies supermarkets such as Tesco, has signed an agreement with Danish food retailer Coop Danmark to supply fresh meat to their stores from 2011.

■ Investors welcomed a return to profit at plastic packaging manufacturer RPC during the first half as net financing costs fell due to lower debt levels and interest rates.

■ Shares in Ascent Resources were on a downward trajectory Friday after the oil and gas company announced fund raising plans.

■ Domino's Pizza has scrapped its tender offer, announced last week, because the shares have fallen about 7 per cent below the tender price.

■ Part-nationalised bank Royal Bank of Scotland has now officially signed up for the government's asset protection scheme (APS).

■ Accident Exchange expects a first-half loss and has warned it needs to refinance as insurers continue to drag their heels over settling claims.

■ Film studio Pinewood Shepperton has had its plans for an extensive redevelopment of its site rejected by the local council.

■ Ex-Microsoft big wheel Patrick De Smedt has joined construction and regeneration group Morgan Sindall as a non-executive director.

■ Property fund manager Warner Estate made a half-year pre-tax loss of £27.6m from £124.7m last time due to reduced property values.

■ Foundry and engineering firm Chamberlin dived into the red at the interim stage but is confident of a better second half.

FOR A SUMMARY OF LATEST MOVEMENTS IN EQUITY, COMMODITY AND CURRENCY MARKETS, SEE FT.COM'S MARKETS PAGE

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NEWSPAPER SHARE TIPS (27 NOV 2009):

Full round-up of newspaper share tips (sourced from Sharecast)

PRESS HEADLINES:

The FTSE 100 suffered its worst one-day fall since March closing down 3.2 per cent. Companies with big Middle Eastern shareholders led the rout, on the back of concerns that high-rolling emirate Dubai would be forced to sell stakes to raise capital.

Barclays Bank tumbled 7.9 per cent and the London Stock Exchange fell 7.4 per cent. There were similar scenes across European stock markets with the French CAC-40 down 3.4 per cent and the German DAX index down 3.3 per cent. In America, markets were closed for the Thanksgiving holiday, but electronic trading of the benchmark S&P 500 equity futures contract showed a potential drop on Wall Street of 2.2 per cent, the Telegraph reports.

Millions of British households are facing rises of up to a third in their water bills over the next five years after Ofwat, the industry regulator, rowed back on its tough stance against the water companies. Worst hit will be the more than 14m households in England and Wales without a water meter. More than half a million unmetered South West Water customers can expect bills to rise by 29 per cent from £723 now to £935 by 2015. Its 1.1m customers with meters face arise of only 1 per cent, to an average of £407, the Times reports.

Alistair Darling will admit in next month's pre-Budget report that the recession has been much deeper than he forecast in March, the Financial Times has learnt. The chancellor is expected to say that the economy contracted by 4.75 per cent in 2009, shrinking at least one percentage point more than predicted in the Budget. But he will also say that the UK has at last turned a corner and is on the road to recovery, ahead of a probable general election in May.

The London Evening Standard, which went free last month in an attempt to lift revenues, has axed its early edition with about 20 jobs set to go. The 182-year old newspaper is to cease printing its "News Extra" edition, published at midday, and will print all 600,000 copies as the later "West End Final" from 4 January. The move is understood to have been accelerated by the closure of rivals thelondonpaper and London Lite, the Independent reports.

HM Revenue & Customs is to announce a last-minute extension to its tax "amnesty" for offshore savers in an effort to encourage more people to come forward. In a statement to be issued today, the Revenue will declare that savers have an extra five weeks to alert it to undeclared offshore accounts before its "new disclosure opportunity" (NDO) ends, the Times reports.

Lloyds' shareholders approved the world's largest ever rights issue – but gave the board a severe dressing down over its controversial takeover of HBOS. The banking group, which acquired the stricken lender in January, was seeking approval for a £13.5bn rights issue along with a £9bn debt exchange, with the aim of escaping the Government's expensive asset protection scheme (GAPS), the Telegraph reports.

A trading glitch halted trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) for three hours yesterday, highlighting the urgent need for an upgrade to its trading platform. It is the second time that trading on the LSE has been halted this fortnight and coincided with a huge sell-off in shares as investors fretted over the impact of Dubai's debt problems. The LSE purchased the Sri Lankan trading platform MillenniumIT in September to better compete with lower-cost rivals such as Chi-X and Turquoise. The exchange expects to switch to the new platform, which has already been adopted by Icap and London Metal Exchange, by the end of next year, the Times reports.

Five leading UK business figures have agreed to help the City regulator the Financial Services Authority interview and approve directors and other top appointees at UK banks and insurance companies. The five are Sir Dominic Cadbury, the former chief executive and then chairman of Cadbury Schweppes; Baroness Hogg, non-executive chairman of 3i; Lord Marshall, former chief executive and then chairman of British Airways; Sir Brian Pitman, former chief executive and chairman of Lloyds TSB; and Sir David Scholey, former chairman and chief executive of SG Warburg, the FT reports.

Borders UK went into administration on Thursday, putting more than 1,000 jobs at risk, after the troubled bookseller failed to find a buyer for its store portfolio. MCR, the restructuring and insolvency company, were appointed by Borders UK management on The collapse of the high-street and retail park chain came a year to the day after Woolworths went into administration on November 26, 2008, the FT reports.

Inflexion, the private equity group, is set to load £13m ($21m) of debt on to FDM Group after it won backing for a 141p per share takeover offer for the IT training group. The independent board of FDM on Thursday backed a third offer, which values FDM at £33.3m, from an Inflexion-backed management team that includes Rod Flavell, chief executive, and Ivan Martin, former of head of banking at Misys, the FT reports.

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