INTU.L Share News (INTU)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Monday.
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COMPANIES
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Glencore outlined plans to improve its financial position, including a USD2.5 billion capital raising plan and multiple capital preservation and debt reduction measures it will take, worth up to a combined USD10.2 billion in cost savings. The multi-commodities miner and trading company said the USD2.5 billion fully-committed equity issue will be used to cut its debt pile and to increase its financial strength. It is 78% underwritten by Citigroup and Morgan Stanley an includes commitments from the group's chief executive, chief financial officer and several other board members, who will cover the remaining 22% of the issue.
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Tesco said it has struck a deal to sell its Homeplus business in South Korea to a consortium led by private equity group MBK Partners for GBP4.24 billion. The retailer said it has sold the company to the MBK-led consortium, which also includes Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Public Sector Pension Investment Board and Temasek Holdings, following an auction process which has been running for the past few months and which attracted the attention of a number of prominent private equity suitors. Tesco said it will get a total of GBP4.0 billion in cash before tax and other transaction costs from the sale and said the deal will allow it to significantly reduce its GBP4.23 billion debt pile.
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Irish building materials company CRH said it has appointed Senan Murphy as its group finance director, effective from January 4, 2016. The FTSE 100 company said Murphy will take over from Maeve Carton, who will move to the role of group transformation director. Murphy joins from Bank of Ireland Group, where is currently chief operating officer.
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Associated British Foods said its expectations remain unchanged for a decline in adjusted operating profit in its current financial year. The group, which owns discount fashion retailer Primark and British Sugar and which operates an agriculture and consumer goods arm, said that a rise in operating profit at constant currency in grocery, agriculture, ingredients and retail will be offset by a decline in the sugar business, which along with changes in foreign exchange rates will lead to an overall fall in adjusted operating profit for the full year.
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Barclays said it has sold its UK secured lending business to a group led by Goldman Sachs, another move in the lender's plans to focus on more profitable parts of the business and cut risk-weighted assets. In a statement, the FTSE 100 bank said the sale of the secured lending portfolio has cut risk-weighted assets by a further GBP1.2 billion, and will have a "positive" effect on its common equity tier one ratio - a key measure of financial strength for banks. Chairman John McFarlane said the sale is a sign of further progress in divesting assets from Barclays' non-core division.
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Starpharma announced it has signed a licensing agreement with AstraZeneca for development and commercialisation of compounds directed at a defined family of targets using its DEP drug delivery technology. AstraZeneca will fund all development and commercialisation costs under the agreement, including ongoing and future collaborative work conducted with Starpharma. Under the agreement, Starpharma will receive a signature payment of USD2 million and is also eligible to receive potential development, launch and sales milestones for the first AstraZeneca DEP product of USD124 million.
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Retail property investor Intu Properties said Chief Operating Officer Mike Butterworth will retire at the end of the year. Intu said the process of determining how to replace Butterworth has started and further details will be announced in due course.
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Dechra Pharmaceuticals said it is currently trading in line with its expectations, although it warned it is still exposed to exchange rate volatility, as it reported a rise in pretax profit for its recently ended financial year. For the year to end-June, the veterinary pharmaceutical business posted a pretax profit of GBP25.8 million, up from GBP21.4 million a year before, as a 5.1% rise in revenue to GBP203.5 million from GBP193.6 million was partly offset by an increase in selling, general and administrative expenses as Dechra continued to invest in its products and sales organisations. Dechra took its total dividend for the year to 16.94 pence, up from 15.40 pence a year before.
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Real estate investor Redefine International said it has reached a conditional deal to acquire the AUK Portfolio from Aegon UK Property Fund for GBP437.2 million. Redefine said it will acquire the portfolio through its Redefine AUK subsidiary. The portfolio includes 19 properties in the UK, mostly in London and the South East, valued at a total of GBP439.9 million, with six single-let and the rest multi-let. In addition, Redefine said it has struck a GBP52.5 million deal to acquire Banbury Cross Retail Park in Oxfordshire.
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Industrial property company SEGRO said it has appointed real estate adviser CBRE to explore a possible sale of its Bath Road office portfolio in Slough. The portfolio comprises 972,300 square foot of office properties leased to a variety of companies and generates around GBP21.6 million in annual rent. SEGRO said there is no certainty a sale will take place, nor on the nature of any such transaction.
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Two pharmaceutical companies announced plans for initial public offerings in London, with Shield Therapeutics planning to float on the London Stock Exchange's Main Market and Faron Pharmaceuticals planning to list on AIM. Shield Therapeutics plans to raise up to GBP110 million in its flotation, and expects to be admitted on or around October 9. The announcement confirms a report in the Financial Times over the weekend that the Newcastle-based company was planning a London listing. Faron, a Finland-based biopharmaceutical company, expects to be admitted to AIM in October. It will use proceeds from its initial public offering to fund its initial pan-European Phase III trial for its product Traumakine for acute respiratory distress syndrome, and as working capital.
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MARKETS
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UK indices trade mixed with the FTSE-100 boosted by mining stocks. Glencore was among the best performers after the company announced debt-reduction measures.
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FTSE 100: up 0.5% at 6,072.08
FTSE 250: up 0.1% at 16,836.00
AIM ALL-SHARE: down 0.1% at 732.40
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GBP: up at USD1.5263
EUR: up at USD1.1163

GOLD: down at USD1121.91 per ounce
OIL (Brent): down at USD49.10 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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The participants in the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors that concluded in Ankara on Saturday pledged to take decisive action to keep the global economic recovery on track. In a communiqué released at the end of the meeting, they said, "we are confident the global economic recovery will gain speed. We will continue to monitor developments, assess spillovers and address emerging risks as needed to foster confidence and financial stability." While avoiding a direct reference to China, the statement said the group would refrain from competitive devaluations, and resist all forms of protectionism.
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China's economy last year expanded less than the government previously announced, data published by the National Bureau of Statistics showed. Gross domestic product grew 7.3% in 2014 instead of 7.4%. GDP totaled CNY 63.6 trillion, which was down by CNY 32.4 billion from the initial estimate. The revision to the service sector was the major reason for downgrading overall growth. Annual growth in the service sector was trimmed to 7.8% from 8.1%.
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China will lift trading restrictions on shares worth around CNY116.3 billion next week, a report said Sunday. The amount is nearly double what was unlocked earlier this week, the official Xinhua news agency reported. China in July suspended trading of over half its entire stock market after stocks plunged by around 40% from a peak in mid-June. The announcement came as the central bank said the stock market rout is close to ending and financial markets are expected to become more stable.
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UK Prime Minister David Cameron will propose diverting funds from Britain's aid budget when he outlines his plans to address the European refugee crisis in a speech to parliament, Chancellor George Osborne said. The government will use Britain's international aid budget to support thousands more Syrian refugees that Cameron has promised to allow into the country under a "fundamental re-think" of Britain's aid policy, Osborne told the BBC. "We have got a GBP12 billion aid budget, we spend GBP250 million on those countries like Syria, Jordan and Turkey," he said. "We have got to have a fundamental re-think of how we are using this budget," Osborne said. Cameron will outline his government's plan to parliament on Monday.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition has agreed to a multi-billion euro boost in aid to help address the surge of migrants coming into Germany as nearly 20,000 asylum seekers fleeing the war in Syria arrived in the country over the weekend. A EUR6 billion package agreed early Monday after late-night talks in Berlin includes EUR3 billion in the 2016 federal budget, and a further EUR3 billion are earmarked to help states and local governments accomodate the migrants. For the current year, EUR1 billion of federal money was to be made available for aid to the migrants. Germany and Austria agreed on Saturday to take in refugees that had been so far prevented by Hungary from travelling further west, citing EU rules that require asylum seekers to file applications in the first EU state they arrive in.
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Germany's industrial production increased in July after falling in June, data from Destatis showed. Industrial production rose 0.7% month-on-month, reversing a revised 0.9% drop in June. Nonetheless, it was slower than the expected growth of 1.1%. Excluding energy and construction, industrial output was up by 0.3%. Energy production grew 1.9% in July, while construction output increased 3.2%.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com; @ArvindBhunjun

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