AJG.L Share News (AJG)

LONDON (Alliance News) - UK shares have opened higher across the board Friday, led by discount airline easyJet.

FTSE 100 constituent easyJet raised its full-year pretax profit guidance, saying it had taken about GBP5 million of revenue from Air France after that airline was hit by a costly pilots strike.

In the FTSE 250, department store Debenhams is up 1.6% after Sports Direct announced late Thursday that it had acquired a further equity interest. Goldman Sachs has responded early Friday by raising Debenhams to Neutral from Sell.

Here is what you need to know at the UK market open:
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MARKETS
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FTSE 100: up 0.8% at 6,495.93
FTSE 250: up 0.8% at 15,125.90
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 0.2% at 739.02
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Hang Seng: up 0.7% at 23,096.54
Nikkei 225: closed up 0.3% at 15,708.65
DJIA: closed flat to marginally lower at 16,801.05
S&P 500: closed flat at 1,946.17
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GBP-USD: down at USD1.6119
EUR-USD: down at USD1.2647

GOLD: down at USD1,206.64 per ounce
OIL (Brent): up at USD93.88 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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Friday's Key Economic Events still to come
(all times British Summer Time)

08:50 France Markit Services PMI
08:55 Germany Markit Services PMI
09:00 EU Markit Services PMI
09:30 UK Markit Services PMI
10:00 EU Retail Sales
13:30 US Nonfarm Payrolls and Unemployment Rate
13:30 US Trade Balance
14:45 US Markit Services PMI
15:00 US ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI
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Pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong forced government offices to stay shut Friday following the end of a two-day public holiday, even as the numbers of protesters out on the streets decreased in the Chinese territory. The protesters stopped some civil servants from entering official buildings, and all visits to central government offices (CGO) were postponed or cancelled. Security staff jostled with protesters as they tried to force open barricades to the government headquarters.
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China's non-manufacturing business activity expanded at a slower rate in September, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. The non-manufacturing business activity index decreased to 54 in September from 54.4 in August. This indicated a slower rate of growth.
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Japan's services sector moved back to expansion in September, the latest survey from Markit Economics revealed, with a 16-month high services PMI score of 52.5. The headline figure is up from 49.9 in August, and it moves back above the boom-or-bust score of 50 that separates expansion from contraction.
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Service sector activity in Ireland expanded at a marginally faster rate in September, results of a survey by Markit Economics showed. The Investec purchasing managers' index, or PMI, for the services sector edged up to 62.5 in September from 62.4 in August. This marked the twenty sixth consecutive month of expansion.
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BROKER RATING CHANGES
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GOLDMAN RAISES DEBENHAMS TO 'NEUTRAL' ('SELL') - TARGET 60 PENCE
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Cantor Fitzgerald Lowers Mothercare PT To 90p From 114p, Reiterates Sell
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COMPANIES - FTSE 100
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EasyJet raised its full-year pretax profit guidance, saying it had taken about GBP5 million of revenue from Air France after that airline was hit by a costly pilots strike and after fuel prices swung in its favour. In a trading update, the low-cost airline said it now expects pretax profit for the year that ended on September 30 to come in between GBP575 million and GBP580 million, up from the GBP545 million to GBP570 million guidance it gave in July.
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United Utilities Group scaled back its future infrastructure spending plans, as it submitted its latest proposal on how it would control the prices it charges customers over the next five years to water industry regulator Ofwat. Ofwat in August told United Utilities that its previous proposals had "very material differences" against the regulator's own assessment of its spending plans and how that would affect price control, particularly on wholesale wastewater price controls. In a statement, United Utilities said it now plans to reduce planned total expenditure by about GBP370 million compared with the previous proposal it put to the regulator.
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The Royal Bank of Scotland Group has hired Goldman Sachs Inc to seek buyers for its Coutts International business and is expected to inform potential suitors that they will be refused the right to use the brand of the private bank, the Financial Times reported Thursday. RBS is planning to keep the UK business of Coutts & Co but is understood to have attracted a number of bidders for the Switzerland-based international arm of the company, the FT said.
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Lawyers representing BP have called for a retrial or revised judgement after identifying what they claim is a legal mistake in the court ruling made last month that the company acted with gross negligence in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, the Financial Times reported. In a filing made on Thursday, BP argued Judge Carl Barbier, who is hearing the civil case related to the disaster, relived on evidence which had been excluded from the trial when reaching his findings, the FT said. BP is to ask Judge Barbier either to revise the ruling to exclude this evidence or to hold a new phase of a trial in order to allow BP to put forward arguments to counter it.
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Sports Direct International said late Thursday it has acquired a further 4.6% equity interest in Debenhams, through the acquisition of 56.4 million shares. In January the company bought a 4.6% stake in Debenhams, which it sold just three days later to replace with an option agreement that will activate if Debenhams shares fall below a certain level in the future. Its maximum exposure to the option is about GBP64 million. At that time the company said it had pledged to work with Debenhams to improve its faltering performance.
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Billionaire investor Warren Buffett on Thursday said he made a "huge mistake" investing in Tesco, and has lost hundreds of millions on the bet, The Times reported. Shares in the supermarket dropped to an 11-year low on Thursday after Buffett, during an interview with CNBC, said he regretted building up a 3.7% stake in the company. Buffett offered a mea culpa during the interview when asked about the investment his Berkshire Hathaway company made in the group. "I made a mistake on that one," Buffett said. "It wasn't anyone else who made it. Yeah, that was a huge mistake by me."
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COMPANIES - FTSE 250
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Renishaw confirmed its financial has started well, with strong first quarter trading which it said it expects to continue into the second. The FTSE 250 engineering company said its first-quarter revenue increased year-on-year, up to GBP101 million from GBP79 million a year earlier, boosted by growth in its Asian business. The group said it expects this performance to continue into the second quarter.
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AMEC said it is trading in line with expectations and affirmed its outlook for the year, though it said sterling strength would hit both profit and revenue. The company said it is continuing to see less greenfield activity in some key upstream oil and gas markets, which is being partially offset by strong growth in its Clean Energy and Middle Eastern Oil & Gas businesses. The FTSE 250 engineering consultancy said it expects modest underlying revenue growth for the full year to December 31 for its existing operations, driven by the Clean Energy and Middle Eastern Oil & Gas divisions. But AMEC said it expects the strength of sterling to hit its revenue by around GBP250 million this year, along with a GBP25 million hit to its full year trading profit.
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Homewares retailer Dunelm Group said strong trading in the first quarter of its financial year was helped by weaker comparatives, but said trading continues to be buoyed by an improving UK economy, new store openings and improvements in its online offering. The company said sales in the 13 weeks to September 27 rose 17% to GBP180.6 million, up from GBP154.3 million a year earlier. Like-for-like sales grew by 8.9%, which it said was helped by a relatively weak performance in the same quarter last year, when footfall was subdued by unusually warm weather.
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COMPANIES - LONDON MAIN MARKET AND AIM
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Aldermore Group set the price range of its initial public offering at between 217 pence and 265p per share, with the mid-point implying a market capitalisation of about GBP800.0 million on admission to the London Stock Exchange, but Miller Homes cited financial markets volatility for pulling its IPO.
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Anite said it has agreed the acquisition of US wireless network data analytics software company Xceed Technologies Inc for up to USD35 million. Wireless hardware and software company Anite said it would pay USD30 million in cash upon completion of the deal, with a further USD5 million in deferred cash dependent on the achievement of performance targets by Xceed in the next two financial years.
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Avon Rubber said a strong second half of the year has left it confident of reporting a full-year results "comfortably ahead" of market expectations for its financial year just ended. In a pre-closing trading statement, the manufacturer of rubber-based products said that foreign-exchange pressure from the strong pound has eased since its last trading update back in August. Therefore, it is expecting to report a better performance than previously forecast for the year ended September 30.
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eServGlobal confirmed it is trading in line with board expectations, following a share price drop in the wake of news that Chief Financial Officer Stephen Blundell had sold 618,055 shares in the company. In a statement, eServGlobal, which provides end-to-end mobile financial services to emerging markets, said that Blundell sold the shares for personal reasons. Blundell retains 631,945 options over a 0.25% stake in the company, eServGlobal added.
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Miton Group said an institutional client has decided to terminate a UK equity income mandate it runs, following the announcement of the retirement of Bill Mott, who joined with the acquisition of PSigma last year. In a statement, the fund management group estimated that the termination will reduce net revenue by GBP1.1 million in calendar 2015. On October 1, the mandate amounted to GBP325.6 million of assets under management, Miton said. The termination will take effect from November 2014.
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Cape said it has secured an extension to its contract with BP PLC to supply services under the Magnus Life Extension project. BP is undertaking the project as part of its North Sea renewals programme, Cape said, with the work to be carried out continuously from now until the second quarter of 2015.
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Technology company Cohort said its MASS subsidiary has won an Electronic Warfare Operational Support service contract with an unnamed Middle East customer. The contract, worth in excess of GBP3 million, is set to start immediately and will last for approximately two years, Cohort said. Cohort said the contract will be carried out alongside the prime contractor on the deal, BAE Systems.
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COMPANIES - INTERNATIONAL
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French telecoms operator Iliad SA is priming to float a bid for a significantly larger chunk of T-Mobile US Inc, according to a Bloomberg report on Thursday. Iliad had in early August made an indicative proposal to the board of directors for T-Mobile, offering USD33.0 per share or USD15 billion in cash for 56.6% of T-Mobile US, which was immediately rejected. Deutsche Telekom, which owns 66% of T-Mobile, rejected the offer as the deal will not help in improving US business as Iliad does not have a track record in the US.
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Walt Disney Co announced it has extended Robert Iger's contract as chairman and chief executive officer through June 30, 2018.
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Friday's Scheduled AGMs/EGMs

Henderson Smaller Cos Investment Trust
Atlantis Japan Growth Fund
Standard Life
Spark Ventures
Abbey
IPSA Group
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By Tom Waite; thomaslwaite@alliancenews.com; @thomaslwaite

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