RDSA.L Share News (RDSA)

LONDON (Alliance News) - Shares prices in London have opened fractionally lower Friday, tracking falls on Wall Street overnight, as investors await the hotly anticipated US nonfarm payrolls data at 1330 BST.

William Hill leads FTSE 250 fallers, down 4.8%, as it reported a drop in profit in the first half of 2015 as it was hit by tax hikes and a tough comparative period. Separately, the bookmaker said that it has bought a stake in online lottery company NeoGames.

Here is what you need to know at the London market open:
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MARKETS
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FTSE 100: down 0.1% at 6,739.20
FTSE 250: down 0.3% at 17,700.04
AIM ALL-SHARE: down 0.4% at 749.83
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Hang Seng: up 0.7% at 24,535.08
Nikkei 225: closed up 0.3% at 20,724.56
DJIA: closed down 0.7% at 17,419.75
S&P 500: closed down 0.8% at 2,083.56
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GBP: down at USD1.5502
EUR: up at USD1.0943

GOLD: up at USD1094.99 per ounce
OIL (Brent): up at USD50.00 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 in BST)

09:30 UK Trade Balance
13:30 US Nonfarm Payrolls, Unemployment Rate, Average Earnings
13:30 Canada Unemployment Rate
13:30 Canada Building Permits
15:00 Canada Ivey Purchasing Managers Index
20:00 US Consumer Credit
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The UK economy expanded at a stable rate in July, extending an improving trend from previous months, latest estimates from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research have revealed. The gross domestic product grew by 0.7% in the three months to July, the same rate of expansion in the previous month, the think tank said. This implies that the economy has expanded by 2.7% in the last 12 months, the NIESR said. In its latest quarterly forecast, released on Wednesday, the institute predicted 2.5 growth for this year and 2.4% expansion for next year.
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Permanent job placements in the UK increased at the weakest pace in over two years in July, the Report on Jobs compiled by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and KPMG showed. The number of people placed in permanent jobs continued to rise in July, but the rate of expansion eased to the slowest in 26 months. The rate of growth in temporary and contract staff billings also moderated to a twenty-five month low in July.
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Germany's industrial production logged an unexpected decline in June, provisional data from Destatis has revealed. Industrial production dropped 1.4% month-on-month in June, which was the biggest fall since August, when it declined 2.8%. It was expected to rise 0.3%. In May, production grew by revised 0.2%.
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The Bank of Japan has decided to keep its monetary policy unchanged and also maintained its inflation and economic growth outlook, the monetary policy statement from the bank showed. The Policy Board of the BoJ governed by Haruhiko Kuroda decided by an 8-1 majority vote to maintain its target of raising the monetary base at an annual pace of about JPY80 trillion. Takahide Kiuchi was the sole dissenter. In the statement, the bank said the economy is expected to continue recovering moderately and annual inflation is forecast to be about zero percent for the time being, due to the effects of the decline in energy prices. Inflation expectations appears to be rising on the whole from a somewhat long-term perspective, the bank noted.
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Islamic State has seized a strategic town in central Syria from President Bashar al-Assad's troops, a monitoring group said, while dozens of fighters from the extremist militia were killed in US-led airstrikes in the east and north-east. The hardline jihadists overran the town of al-Qaryatain south-west of the historic city of Palmyra, which has been under the control of Islamic State since May. Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 51 Islamic State militants were killed in the past 48 hours by US-led airstrikes targeting the group's strongholds in eastern and north-eastern Syria.
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BROKER RATING CHANGES
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DEUTSCHE BANK RAISES STANDARD CHARTERED TO 'HOLD' ('SELL')- TARGET 918 PENCE (864P)
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JPMORGAN CUTS NEXT TO 'NEUTRAL' ('OVERWEIGHT') - TARGET 7700 PENCE
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LIBERUM RAISES COBHAM TO 'BUY' ('HOLD') - TARGET 330 (315) PENCE
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SOCGEN RAISES BRITVIC TO 'BUY' ('HOLD') - TARGET 800 (785) PENCE
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BERENBERG CUTS AGGREKO TO 'SELL' ('HOLD') - TARGET 980 (1200) PENCE
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COMPANIES - FTSE 100
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Royal Dutch Shell said it has secured a deal to sell its 75% stake in China-based Tongyi Lubricants to Huo's Group and private equity company Carlyle Group. The oil major did not provide any financial details on the transaction, but said it expects to complete the deal by late 2015 or early 2016. Tongyi is a joint venture between Shell and Huo's Group, the Chinese lubricants supplier. Shell said the deal is consistent with its ongoing strategy of consolidating its downstream operations and focusing them on a smaller base of assets and on markets in which it can be competitive.
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UK media and communications regulator Ofcom late Thursday opened an investigation into Sky after complaints made by consumers that the company had ignored their requests to cancel their contracts with the broadcaster and telecommunications group. Ofcom said it has opened an investigation into Sky after it received complaints that it was making it difficult for consumers to cancel their subscriptions. It comes as part of a probe launched by the regulator into the way that providers across the board give consumers the opportunity to cancel their contracts. The new probe will look at Sky's television, phone and broadband services.
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GlaxoSmithKline and Theravance Inc late Thursday announced the approval in Canada of BREO ELLIPTA for the once-daily maintenance treatment of asthma in patients aged 18 years and older with reversible obstructive airways disease.
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COMPANIES - FTSE 250
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William Hill reported a drop in profit in the first half of 2015 as it was hit by tax hikes and a tough comparative period, and said it has bought a stake in online lottery company NeoGames. The bookmaker reported a 35% drop in pretax profit in the 26 weeks ended June 30 to GBP78.7 million from GBP121.8 million in the first half of the prior year. Revenue, however, grew to GBP808.1 million from GBP805.2 million. The company will pay an interim dividend of 4.1 pence, a 3% rise on the 4.0p it paid the year before. Separately, William Hill said that it has bought a 29.4% stake in online lottery software and services provider NeoGames for a total cash consideration of GBP16 million, and said it has an option to acquire the remaining 70.6% after three or five years.
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SSP Group said it has agreed to acquire 32 bakery outlets in Germany from Wiener Feinbäckerei Heberer GmbH for around GBP5 million in cash. SSP operates food and beverage concessions in travel locations such as airports, train stations and motorway service stations. It said the bakery outlets sell products in travel locations in Germany, with 30 of them located in railways stations, and two in airports. The value of the gross assets being acquired is around GBP5 million, and the assets produced a profit of around GBP1 million in 2014.
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Grainger said that it has signed a planned refinancing of its syndicated bank facility, reducing its cost and extending its maturity. The residential property owner and manager said the new GBP580 million facility, which will represent 44% of total Grainger facilities of GBP1.3 billion, will mature in August 2020 extended from July 2016. The margin on the facility has been reduced by 50 basis points to 170 basis points. Grainger said the facility structure enables further pricing benefits to be gained at future lower levels of loan to value. The group also said average cost of debt reduces to 4.6% from 5.1% as at March 31, 2015 and average maturity of group debt is now 5.8 years compared to 4.4 years as at March 31, 2015. Grainger said net debt stood at around GBP1.1 billion as at July 31 2015 following significant recent investment into regional market rented assets.
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Housebuilder Bellway said it sold more houses at higher prices in its 2015 financial year and said its forward order book leaves its looking strong moving into the new year. The company said it sold 7,752 homes in the year to the end of July, up 13% from the 6,851 it sold a year earlier, with the average selling price of those homes rising to GBP224,000 from GBP213,182. Bellway said its operating margin for the year is set to rise by around 300 basis points to over 20%, from 17.2% a year earlier. The group said it has 4,568 homes in its forward order book, up from 4,363 at the end of its 2014 financial year, with a total value of GBP1.09 billion, up from GBP924.3 million.
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COMPANIES - LONDON MAIN MARKET AND AIM
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Postal operator UK Mail Group said its full-year results will materially miss market expectations after the group said the short-term challenges it faces are more severe than initially anticipated. UK Mail said its parcel volumes in the first four months of its new financial year, starting on April 1, were up by 4% year-on-year, but the move to a new fully-automated facility in Coventry has resulted in a greater-than-expected level of customer churn and a higher-than-anticipated fall in volumes, along with an associated impact on its parcel revenue mix. In addition, a higher proportion of current parcel volumes are incompatible with the company's new automated sortation equipment, meaning it has incurred extra operating costs and a delay to the full benefits of moving to automation.
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Dragon Oil has posted a fall in pretax profit for its first half, hit by the fall in crude oil prices, as its takeover by Emirates National Oil Company LLC was declared unconditional, and it has subsequently begun the process of delisting. Despite seeing higher gross production in the half year compared to the previous year, the significant drop in crude oil prices hit Dragon Oil's results. It had average gross product rate of around 92,060 barrels of oil per day in the first half, compared to 73,440 barrels of oil per day in the previous year. Dragon Oil did not propose an interim dividend. In the previous year it paid an interim dividend of 20.00 cents.
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Aer Lingus Group said that passenger traffic and load factor increased in July on the same month of the prior year. The Irish airline said that Aer Lingus mainline passenger traffic increased by 5.6% in July to 1.1 million, up 5.6% year-on-year, while revenue passenger kilometres grew 12% to 2.0 million from 1.8 million. Its load factor rose by 1.3 percentage points to 88.6% from 87.3%.
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Lighting company Dialight said it is planning to cut 12% of its workforce as part of a cost-cutting drive. Dialight said in its interim results in July that its pretax profit took a hit due to operational inefficiencies and excess costs in the business, and said it is now taking action to try and mitigate those issues. It said the redundancy programme will generate run-rate savings of GBP3 million a year, with GBP1 million to be saved in 2015, though this will be wiped out by one-off costs of the same amount.
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COMPANIES - INTERNATIONAL
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German insurer Allianz SE reported that profit for the second quarter grew 15% from last year, driven by revenue growth and strong operating profit improvement in property and casualty insurance. Allianz also confirmed operating profit outlook for the full-year 2015 at the upper end of the range. Total revenues for the quarter grew 2.4% to EUR30.2 billion from EUR29.5 billion in the same quarter last year. Operating profit for the quarter improved 2.6% to EUR2.84 billion from EUR2.77 billion in the year-ago quarter.
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Friday's Scheduled AGMs/EGMs

Central Rand Gold
Market Tech Holdings
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By James Kemp; jameskemp@alliancenews.com; @jamespkemp

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