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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TSB Banking Group shares shot higher after the company confirmed it has received a preliminary takeover offer of 340 pence per share from Spanish banking group Banco de Sabadell SA. The offer values TSB at GBP1.70 billion. TSB said its board has indicated to Sabadell that it would be willing to recommend an offer at the proposed price, subject to the pair reaching agreements on other terms and conditions of the offer, on which the board has now entered talks with Sabadell. TSB said any takeover by Sabadell would be dependent on the completion of due diligence and on Lloyds Banking Group, TSB's majority shareholder, agreeing to an irrevocable undertaking in respect of its entire stake in TSB.
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ITV said it has agreed to acquire buy Dutch media tycoon John De Mol Jr's production company Talpa Media BV for an initial cash consideration of around EUR500 million, funded from its existing cash resources and new debt facilities. The maximum consideration ITV will pay for the Netherlands-based production firm is up to EUR1.1 billion, contingent on Talpa delivering "significant profit growth" over an eight-year period, and de Mol's continued commitment to the business during this period. Talpa is behind reality television programmes 'The Voice', 'Utopia', and 'Dating in the Dark'.
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Wm Morrison Supermarkets reported a widened loss for its last financial year, as revenue fell as it lost customers to rivals and it was forced to invest heavily in lowering prices, and it also booked a massive writedown on property. It raised its dividend for the last year by 5%, meeting a commitment it had given last March, but suggested it will cut the payout sharply in the current financial year as it preserves cash to spend on its turnaround efforts. The UK's fourth-largest grocer by market share said its targets for the current year will be to lure back customers and improve its offering, and it expects to make "further progress" on cash flow and cut its debt. It said it will provide a more detailed outlook once incoming Chief Executive David Potts has reviewed the components of its new strategy.
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UK telecoms regulator OFCOM launched a wide-ranging strategic review of digital communications in the UK, looking at competition, investment, innovation and availability of products in the broadband, mobile and landline markets. The review will be Ofcom's second of the wider sector; its first being a review that took place between the end of 2003 and 2005 which led to the enforcement of rules allowing competing providers access to BT Group's network. Ofcom said the new review will consider a range of issues, with a focus on ensuring the right incentives for private-sector investment, maintaining strong competition and taking on obstacles that might be "holding the sector back", and assessing the possibility of deregulation in some areas.
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Antofagasta said it has reached an agreement to resolve protests near its operations in Chile, and said normal operations will begin in "the coming days". On Monday, the miner said copper production at its Los Pelambres mine in Chile had been reduced by about 5,000 tonnes due to ongoing protests that are causing limited disruption at the site after a small group of protesters from the the local Choapa valley community established intermittent blockades at several points on the access road. On Thursday, the company said the final impact of the protests will be around 8,000 tonnes of lost copper production in 2015, but said it will try to mitigate the impact over the year when operations recommence soon.
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Shares in embattled outsourcing company Serco Group plunged after the company reported a massive pretax loss for 2014, as it booked huge provisions on onerous contracts, reported its first fall in revenue as a listed company, and confirmed it had scrapped its final dividend payout, while also saying it will launch a GBP555 million rights issue at a more than 50% discount. Serco said its pretax loss for 2014 was GBP1.35 billion, compared to a GBP108.3 million profit a year earlier. The loss was caused by a total of GBP1.31 billion in one-off provisions the company made in the year on asset impairments and other charges.
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Building products distributor SIG reported higher pretax profit on the back of the non-recurrence of one-off writedowns booked last year and hiked its dividend on the back of the results, even as its revenue for the year fell. SIG said its pretax profit for 2014 was GBP39 million, compared to a GBP2.1 million profit in 2013 when the company booked more than GBP80 million in writedowns and impairment charges on businesses it sold. SIG's total dividend payout for the year is 4.4 pence, up 24% on the 3.55 pence paid out in 2013.
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SOCO International reported a huge reduction in profit after its revenue fell on the back of lower oil prices, lower production and significant impairments, causing the company to slash its dividend nearly in half. The FTSE 250 oil and gas company also warned that production will fall again in 2015, and it is expecting oil prices throughout the year to be below what it achieved in 2014, suggesting the company will have a difficult year ahead of it. SOCO reported a profit after tax of USD14 million in 2014, down over 86% from the USD104.1 million profit it recorded in 2013. The company slashed its full year dividend to 22.0 pence per share, nearly half the 40.0 pence per share paid at the end of 2013. The stock fell 26%.
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Computacenter said it is determined to make 2015 "a year of progress", and posted a rise in pretax profit for 2014, as a strong performance in the UK helped offset declines in Germany and a continued weak performance in France. The company proposed a final dividend of 13.1 pence, taking its total dividend for 2014 to 19.8 pence, compared to 17.5 pence a year before. Computacenter reported pretax profit of GBP76.4 million, up from GBP50.5 million a year before, as revenue rose 1.4% to GBP3.11 billion from GBP3.07 billion, and it posted lower exceptional costs.
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Home Retail Group said it expects its benchmark pretax profit in the recently-ended financial year to be at the top end of current market expectations, after sales in the last eight weeks of the year fell but it said it had made progress on gross margin and costs. The company said Argos sales in the eight weeks to the end of the financial year on February 28 were down 4.0% at GBP505 million, bringing the total for the year to GBP4.10 billion, up 1.1%. Sales at Homebase in the final two months were down 3.8% at GBP193 million, as that chain also faced strong comparatives and it also traded from fewer stores. Sales for the year as a whole fell 3.0% to GBP1.48 billion.
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Cineworld Group said its pretax profit more than doubled in 2014 on the back of higher revenue, prompting the cinema chain to hike its dividend by more than 30%. Cineworld said its pretax profit for the 53 weeks to January 1, 2015 was GBP67.3 million, compared to GBP30.9 million in the 52 weeks to December 26, 2013. On the back of the results, the company said it would pay a final dividend of 9.7 pence per share, bringing its total dividend to 13.5 pence against 10.1 pence a year earlier, a 34% hike.
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Online fashion retailer ASOS reported strong sales growth during the second quarter of its financial year, driven by strong growth in the UK, and Chief Executive Nick Robertson also said its new pricing strategy in international markets is also showing signs of paying off. The fast-growing retailer said revenue was up 20% at GBP298.3 million in the three months to February 28, from GBP249.0 million a year earlier, an acceleration from the first quarter that meant revenue for the first half was up 14% at GBP550.5 million.
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Shawbrook Group joined a growing list of new UK lenders coming to the stock market, reflecting the growth of a sector that has been encouraged by the UK government in the wake of the financial crisis that damaged the lending abilities of the traditional banks. Shawbrook, whose loan book grew to GBP2.3 billion in 2014 as it made GBP1.4 billion of new loans to UK businesses and consumers, is mainly focused on lending to UK small businesses which it says are poorly served by the traditional large lenders. Shawbrook, which was formed in 2011, said a listing will mark the next stage in its growth strategy and it is expecting to raise about GBP90 million for the company in the IPO. It wants a premium listing on the LSE's Main Market, but didn't give any further details of the offering.
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MARKETS
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UK stocks are trading broadly higher with mining stocks leading the FTSE 100 and TSB Banking Group shares topping the FTSE 250, as investors await US retail sales data to be released this afternoon.
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FTSE 100: up 0.8% at 6,772.10
FTSE 250: up 0.4% at 17,009.46
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 0.8% at 717.27

GBP-USD: up at USD1.4990
EUR-USD: up at USD1.0604

GOLD: up at USD1160.33 per ounce
OIL (Brent): up at USD58.22 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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The UK visible trade deficit narrowed largely due to a fall in oil imports in January, data published by the Office for National Statistics showed. The visible trade deficit narrowed to GBP 8.4 billion in January from GBP 9.9 billion in December. The shortfall was forecast to decline to GBP 9.6 billion. Exports decreased GBP 1 billion and imports declined more substantially by GBP 2.5 billion. The fall in imports was the largest monthly decrease since July 2006.
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The house price balance for a home in the UK was up 14% in February, the latest survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showed on Thursday, with an index score of 14%. That beat forecasts for 6% and double from 7% in February. By region, house prices in London were down, while prices were higher in the south west and south east. "It is encouraging that the negative trend in buyer inquiries appears to be dissipating, perhaps in part because of growing confidence that the cost of borrowing will stay lower for longer, but more worrying that instructions to sell property continue to drop," said RICS chief economist Simon Rubinsohn.
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The increase in self-employment may not represent any additional slack in the economy, the Bank of England said in a quarterly bulletin published on Thursday. "A large part of the increase in self-employment since 2008 does indeed seem to reflect trends that began before the recession," BoE Economist Srdan Tatomir said in the research paper. There was a trend increase in the female self-employment rate in the population, it noted. To the extent that most of the increase in self-employment can be accounted for by structural factors, the cyclical effects are not likely to represent any additional slack above what is incorporated in BoE staff estimates.
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Britain became the latest nation to require standard packaging of cigarettes on Wednesday after a large majority of lawmakers approved legislation banning tobacco firms' branding. Following the vote, branded packaging is expected to be banned from next year, putting Britain alongside Australia and Ireland as nations insisting on plain packaging in a bid to make smoking less attractive. The move was backed by 367 members of parliament in a free vote, with 113 voting against it. The opponents of the legislation included 104 members of the Conservative party. Prime Minister David Cameron and opposition Labour party leader Ed Miliband were among those who voted for the change.
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The Bank of Korea's monetary policy board trimmed the nation's benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to a record low 1.75% - defying expectations for a fifth straight month of no change at 2.00%.
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Eurozone industrial production declined unexpectedly in January, data from Eurostat revealed. Industrial production fell 0.1% in January from December, which was the first fall in five months. Economists had forecast output to grow 0.2% after rising 0.3% in December. On a yearly basis, industrial production growth doubled to 1.2% from 0.6% in December. The growth rate was expected to decelerate to 0.1%.
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Germany's consumer prices recovered as estimated earlier in February, final data from Destatis showed. The consumer price index grew 0.1% in February from last year, confirming the flash estimate. This was in contrast to the 0.4% decrease in the previous month. Month-on-month, consumer prices advanced 0.9% in February, compared to a 1.1% drop in January. This was also unrevised form the preliminary estimate.
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Countries in the eurozone must pursue an "ambitious reform agenda," international financial institutions said following a meeting Wednesday in Berlin led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The heads of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other agencies welcomed "ongoing efforts by many euro area countries to enhance their productivity, to raise employment and to improve fiscal positions," they said in a joint statement with Merkel. Further efforts are "urgently needed across euro area member states" to address youth employment, social inclusion and structural reforms, the statement said.
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Two police officers in the US city of Ferguson, Missouri were shot near the police station early Thursday, local media reported. Witnesses said the shots came from a hill across the street from the police station, according to local reporter Jeff Bernthal, who posted comments on Twitter. Police units were reportedly at a house located on the hill, the reporter for KPLR/FOX 2 said. Tensions between local residents and police in Ferguson have remained high since last year's fatal police shooting of a black teenager. On Wednesday, Ferguson's police chief announced his resignation after federal officials blamed his police force for practising systematic racial discrimination.
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