BT Share News (BT.A)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Thursday.
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COMPANIES
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Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto shares rose to the top of the FTSE 100 after it reported a fall in underlying earnings in 2014, but said it would hike its dividend and will launch a USD2 billion share buyback programme in order to return USD6.0 billion to shareholders. "Last year, we made a clear commitment to materially increase cash returns to our shareholders. We have delivered this today through a 12% increase in our full year dividend and a proposed USD2.0 billion share buy-back. These represent a total cash return to shareholders, in respect of 2014, of almost USD6.0 billion," said Chief Executive Sam Walsh. The company said its underlying earnings, before one off items, for the year to the end of December hit USD9.31 billion, down from USD10.2 billion last year.
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BT Group announced a placing of new shares to raise around GBP1.0 billion, which it will use to part fund its acquisition of mobile provider EE Ltd. BT announced last Thursday that it has agreed to buy EE from its joint owners Deutsche Telekom AG and Orange SA for GBP12.5 billion in cash and shares. BT said the shares issued in the placing will represent around 3% of its outstanding share capital. The placing will be conducted through an accelerated bookbuilding process conducted by JP Morgan Securities , Merrill Lynch International and Goldman Sachs.
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Imperial Tobacco Group said tobacco net revenue grew by 4% at constant currency rates to GBP1.49 billion in the first quarter of its financial year, driven by volume and revenue growth from its growth brands, and reaffirmed its outlook for the full year, with dividend growth of at least 10%. However, the firm said it continues to take a hit from adverse currency movements, primarily the strong pound, which in the three months to end-December pushed tobacco net revenue into negative territory at reported rates - down 2%. Excluding the impact of the group's stock optimisation programme, Imperial said tobacco net revenue was down 1%, with a 4% decline in volume.
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AstraZeneca agreed to pay the US government USD7.9 million to settle allegations that it engaged in a kickback scheme in violation of the False Claims Act, the Justice Department announced. AstraZeneca markets and sells pharmaceutical products in the US, including a drug sold under the trade name Nexium. The settlement resolves allegations that AstraZeneca agreed to provide remuneration to Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefit manager, in exchange for Medco maintaining Nexium's "sole and exclusive" status on certain Medco formularies and through other marketing activities related to those Medco formularies.
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Royal Dutch Shell and BP are resisting efforts by Abu Dhabi to get them to pay a multi-billion dollar signing-on fee to get a stake in developing the emirate's biggest onshore oil fields, the Financial Times reported. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co is understood to have demanded around USD8 billion in total from a number of international oil companies which are seeking to get a piece of a 40% equity stake in oil reserves to be developed over the next 40 years, the FT said.
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Wm Morrison Supermarkets said outgoing Chief Executive Dalton Philips will now be stepping down on Monday next week, and in the interim replaced by Finance Director Trevor Strain until a new CEO is found. In a statement, the supermarket chain said the search for a new CEO is "progressing well". Having initially announced last month that Philips would be stepping down in March after five years at the helm, Morrisons said Philips will in fact now be stepping down from the board and leaving the company this coming Monday.
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Morgan Advanced Materials reported its pretax profit halved in 2014, as revenue was dragged back by currency headwinds over the year. The FTSE 250-listed carbon and ceramic products manufacturer said its pretax profit for the year to December 31 was down to GBP31.5 million from GBP64 million a year earlier. The company has proposed a final dividend of 7.0 pence per share, up on the 6.7 pence paid last year, bringing its total dividend for 2014 to 10.9 pence per share from 10.5 pence a year earlier.
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Informa raised its dividend for 2014, as impairment charges offset a rise in revenue, leading it to swing to a pretax loss. The business media and events company company proposed a final dividend of 12.9 pence, taking its total dividend to 19.3 pence, up from 18.9 pence a year before. Informa said that, assuming current exchange rates continue, it expects to deliver earnings per share growth in 2015.
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Support services company DCC said its operating profit in the third quarter rose year-on-year, on the back of good performances in its technology, healthcare, environmental and food and beverage units. DCC said volumes and margins in its DCC Energy business were held back by the milder weather conditions in Europe, in particular in the UK, its largest market. The group reiterated its full-year expectations on the back of the third quarter results, saying it still expects to generate earnings per share growth of 5-10%.
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Shares in online property portal Zoopla Property Group dropped after the company reported a drop in listings in the first four months of its financial year, despite it shrugging off the threat posted by start-up rival OnTheMarket. FTSE 250-listed Zoopla said it is trading in line with expectations for its financial year to the end of September so far and is on track to achieve its long-term growth targets. Zoopla added it had 42.3 million average monthly visits between October 1 and the end of January and a record 50.5 million visits in January. Mobile users now account for more than 60% of the monthly visits, the company said, with online customer numbers up 42% year-on-year.
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The Court of Appeal has rejected Ryanair's challenge of a Competition Appeal Tribunal ruling that it must sell most of its 29% stake in Aer Lingus Group, and refused permission for Ryanair to appeal to the supreme court. The Competition and Markets Authority ruled that Ryanair's holding in Aer Lingus was anti-competitive, and required it to sell down its stake in the company to 5%. Ryanair said it will now appeal the case to the UK Supreme Court, saying it "raises human rights issues of significant public importance, including the scope of protection offered to businesses by the right to property." It has also requested a formal review of the CMA of its final report, and a withdrawal of its call for Ryanair to sell its sake, in light of the recent offers from International Consolidated Airlines Group for Aer Lingus.
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MARKETS
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London equities indices have pushed higher, along with their European counterparts, amid news of a ceasefire agreement in the Ukrainian conflict.
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FTSE 100: up 0.4% at 6,847.01
FTSE 250: up 0.6% at 16,735.29
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 0.2% at 698.35
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The pound is up at a 6-day high against the dollar after the Bank of England released its quarterly Inflation Report, saying it sees slack left in the UK economy of just 0.5% of GDP.
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GBP-USD: up at USD1.5327
EUR-USD: flat at USD1.1338

GOLD: up at USD1224.15 per ounce
OIL (Brent): up at USD56.85 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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A ceasefire agreement for Ukraine has been reached at peace talks in Belarus and will take effect at midnight on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin says after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
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The International Monetary Fund has reached a deal with Ukraine that would offer the cash-strapped country USD17.5 billion over the next four years, in return for "ambitious" reforms, IMF chief Christine Lagarde announced. While fighting a pro-Russian insurgency in the east of the country, cash-strapped Kiev has been negotiating a package of deep economic and political reforms, in return for a much-needed international financial lifeline. The deal still requires the approval of the IMF's executive board, Lagarde said, adding that she would submit it for review "hopefully before the end of February."
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Structural reforms should complement monetary policy in order to raise real potential growth, Executive Board member of European Central Bank Peter Praet said. "Indeed, perhaps the biggest risk we face with our new measures is that they fall on barren ground because governments are not doing enough to raise confidence in the future," he said at the FT Debt Capital Markets Outlook Conference in London. If firms simultaneously revise down their growth expectations with the expanding monetary policy, then there will not be any impact as required.
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Eurozone industrial production remained flat in December after expanding for three consecutive months, data from Eurostat revealed. Industrial production remained unchanged from November, while it was forecast to grow 0.2%. The growth rate for November was revised down to 0.1% from 0.2%. Production of durable consumer goods rose 2.3% and intermediate goods by 1.1%. Energy output and capital goods output gained 1% and 0.2%, respectively. Meanwhile, non-durable consumer goods fell by 1.8%. On a yearly basis, industrial output declined unexpectedly by 0.2%, following a revised 0.8% fall in November. Economists had forecast a 0.3% growth for December.
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The average asking price for a house in the UK continued to increase in January, albeit at a slower pace, the latest survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showed, with a score of +7. That was down substantially from +12 in December, and it marked the slowest rate of growth since May 2013. Prices in London's capital region slipped for a fifth consecutive month, falling to a six-year low.
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A hotly debated Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline cleared final US Congressional approval and was bound for the desk of President Barack Obama, who has vowed to veto the law. The House of Representatives voted 270 to 152 to adopt the bill previously passed by the Senate, putting the new, Republican-dominated Congress on course for its first veto.
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Italian captain Francesco Schettino was found guilty of the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia cruise liner three years ago and sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment. Judges in Grosseto, central Italy, also inflicted on the 54-year-old a lifetime ban on holding public office and barred him from his profession for five years. The court ordered Schettino to pay millions of euros in legal fees and damages to a long list of plaintiffs, including victims and Italian authorities, together with Concordia's owners, Costa Crociere.
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