Glaxosmithkline Share News (GSK)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Monday.
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COMPANIES
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Chiquita Brands International Inc and Fyffes PLC said they have reached a deal whereby Chiquita will acquire Fyffes to create the world's largest banana company, but the deal is likely to draw the scrutiny of antitrust regulators. In a statement, the companies said they have an agreed all-stock deal which will result in Chiquita shareholders owning 50.7% and Fyffes holders owning 49.3% of ChiquitaFyffes, a New York-listed company with annual revenues of about USD4.6 billion. The deal comes as banana producers continue to struggle, with prices continuing to fall while production costs rise.
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Senior PLC said it has agreed to acquire UPECA Technologies Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian-based manufacturer of high-precision engineered components serving the aerospace and energy sectors, in a GBP75.5 million deal that the FTSE 250 manufacturer expects to boost earnings with immediate effect. In a statement, Senior said the GBP75.5 million deal is made up of the GBP58.2 million in cash it will pay for the company and GBP17.3 million of net debt it will take on. The deal will be funded using cash and existing borrowing facilities.
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Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline PLC launched the GBP629 million open offer to increase its stake in its Indian unit to 75%, from 50.7%, a deal it had announced back in September. In a statement, the company said it will offer INR3,100 a share for up to 20.6 million shares in GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals Ltd, or a maximum 24.3% stake. It said the offer is a premium of about 26% to the Indian unit's share price on December 13. Under Indian listing rules, a listed company needs to have a minimum free float of 25% and Glaxo wants to maintain a separate listing for the unit.
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Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever PLC acquired Sunday a majority stake in Chinese water purification company Qinyuan Group Co. Ltd. in order to complement its Pureit water purification business. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by the company.
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London's burgeoning initial public offering market got another boost as Israeli digital marketing company Matomy Media Group Ltd said it will list on the Main Market and intellectual property company Tekcapital PLC said it will list on AIM. The news of the latest proposed listings came as Pets At Home said it now expects conditional dealings in its IPO to start March 12, a day earlier than it previously expected, while Indian online fashion retailer Koovs listed on AIM with an initial market capitalisation of about GBP36.2 million and quickly shot higher.
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Consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC said it has bought the K-Y brand from Johnson & Johnson unit McNeil-PPC Inc, a deal that will add the sexual lubricant to its stable of Durex sexual health products. It didn't give any financial details of the deal. K-Y made sales of more than USD100 million in 2013. It is sold in more than 50 countries.
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Essar Energy PLC denied that it had any plans to close the Stanlow refinery in the UK, refuting recent media speculation, saying it will cut costs at the plant in an attempt to offset the recent drop in industry-wide refining margins.
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MARKETS
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UK stocks are trading higher, shrugging off steep losses recorded by Asian exchanges earlier, amid a dearth of fresh UK macro-economic data releases.
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FTSE 100: up 19.20 at 6,731.87
FTSE 250: up 40.41 at 16,599.86
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 1.70 at 897.47
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GBP-USD: down at USD1.6652
EUR-USD: down at USD1.3873

GOLD: down at USD1,336.00 per ounce
OIL (Brent): down at USD108.03 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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The British economy is set to exceed its pre-recession peak in the second quarter, and to grow at a faster pace this year than estimated earlier, a report published by the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) said. The BCC expects the economy to expand 2.8% this year, which is faster than the 2.7% growth it had predicted in December. Quarterly growth is forecast at 0.7% in the first quarter. The outlook for 2015 has been revised up to 2.5% from 2.4%. In 2016, the growth rate will remain at 2.5%.
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Chinese exports declined unexpectedly, while growth in imports accelerated in February, taking the trade balance surprisingly to a negative zone. Exports declined sharply by 18.1%, reversing the 10.6% increase in January, data from the General Administration of Customs showed Saturday. The decline was in contrast to a 7.5% rise forecast by economists. On the other hand, imports grew 10.1%, when growth was forecast to slow to 7.6% from 10%. Consequently, the trade balance showed a deficit of USD22.98 billion compared to a surplus of USD31.86 billion seen in January. Economists were expecting a surplus of USD14.5 billion.
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The Japanese economy grew at an annual rate of 0.7% in the October-December period, revised down from an initial estimate of 1%, the government said. Consumer spending - which accounts for about 60% of gross domestic product (GDP) - edged up 0.4%, revised slightly from a preliminary reading of 0.5%, the Cabinet Office said. Growth in capital spending was also revised downwards to 0.8% from the initial estimate of 1.3% expansion, the office said.
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France's industrial production fell back into contraction in January, contrary to economist's forecast for a marked increase, latest data revealed. Industrial production edged down 0.1% year-on-year in January, reversing increases of 0.3% and 1.5% logged in December and November respectively, statistical office Insee said. Economists were looking for 1.3% expansion for January.
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Eurozone investor confidence reached its highest level since April 2011 underpinned by a notable improvement in current situation assessment, survey conducted by the think tank Sentix showed. The composite confidence index rose to 13.9 in March from 13.3 in February, while it was forecast to rise to 14. However, it was the highest score since April 2011.
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European finance ministers are set Monday to launch three days of last-ditch negotiations on a new scheme to shield taxpayers from bank bailouts, with the clock ticking on the much-touted measure. The new mechanism to wind down troubled banks in the eurozone would be the second element of a crisis-thwarting banking union that is considered key to restoring trust in the currency bloc. The EU's finance ministers and parliament are trying to hammer out a compromise on the scheme before European elections in May. Diplomats believe that a failure to do so would delay any decision until 2015 - potentially to the detriment of EU credibility.
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International investigation teams were pursuing leads as the search for a missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet with 239 people on board continued for a third day with few results, a senior Malaysian aviation official said. Azhaddin Abdul Rahman, deputy head of the Civil Aviation Authority, said there has been no verified sighting of objects from missing aircraft or of the wreck itself. "We have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft," he said.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will discuss formation of a contact group to establish direct talks with Ukraine, British government officials confirmed Sunday. The news comes after a telephone call between the Russian leader, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, marking a continuation of Western efforts to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.
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Ukraine has used an economic lever in its territorial dispute with Russia, with the new leadership in Kiev freezing the bank accounts of members of the pro-Russian government in the Crimean peninsula. The move makes it impossible for the autonomous region to conduct day-to-day business, Crimean Deputy Premier Rustam Temirgalyew said on Sunday in the regional capital Simferopol, adding that the region's leadership had already reached out to Russian banks to open new accounts.
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Austria may have to implement budget cuts as the winding down of the troubled Hypo Alpe Adria bank will add EUR17.8 billion to public debts, central bank chief Ewald Nowotny said Sunday. Nowotny announced that he and leaders of financial oversight authorities have advised the government to split a bad bank off the nationalized Hypo, in order to wind down bad loans and leasing deals that resulted from a failed expansion in Balkan countries.
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The global amount of outstanding debts has risen to 100 trillion dollars as of mid-2013, owing to large-scale issuing of bonds by governments and businesses in the wake of the financial crisis, the Bank of International Settlements said Sunday. In 2007, the debt totalled 70 trillion dollars. Most of the increase came from government programmes to boost economic growth and to rescue banks, said BIS.
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The Afghan Taliban instructed their fighters to disrupt the April 5 presidential election, warning people not to take part in the polls "designed in the CIA and Pentagon offices." "Our demand to the clerics, scholars, university lecturers and school teachers is to tell the people about these conspiracies and their negative consequences," Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the insurgents, said in a statement. This was the Taliban's first official reaction to the presidential election, although their spokesmen had already warned people against voting in interviews.
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A final agreement on Iran's disputed nuclear programme is possible within "months," Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Sunday during a landmark visit to Tehran by the EU's foreign policy chief. "If the other side has the same motivation, the nuclear issue can be solved within the next four months," Zarif said in a press conference with Catherine Ashton.
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North Korean state media reported Sunday that nearly all registered voters had cast their ballots to elect members of the Supreme People's Assembly for the first time since Kim Jong Un took leadership of the authoritarian regime after his father's death two years ago. The Assembly is nominally the highest legislative power, but in practice only meets once or twice a year to rubber-stamp policies drawn up by the Workers' Party.
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