Stvg Share News (STVG)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Tuesday.
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COMPANIES
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Barclays PLC said it is now targeting a higher leverage ratio after reaching its 3.0% target six months ahead of schedule. In the bank's full-year earnings release, Barclays said 2014 will be another year of transition as it continues to shrink its balance sheet, particularly in its investment bank. Barclays also unveiled plans to cut 10,000 to 12,000 jobs as it continues to target lower costs in the coming years, with about 820 senior management set to leave the bank. About 400 of those cuts relate to Barclays' investment bank.
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Babcock International Group PLC said its bid pipeline has increased by GBP3.0 billion to GBP18.5 billion since the half-year end, making good on its promise at the time that "significant" long-term growth opportunities were being progressed. In a statement covering the period from October 1, 2013, Babcock said its higher bid pipeline, together with the significant opportunities still being tracked, will be the key driver of organic growth over the next few years.
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Glencore Xstrata PLC said it increased production in 2013 across the majority of its portfolio of assets in a production report. The mining giant said its total own-sourced copper production increased 26% to 1.5 million tonnes in the full year ended December 31, 2013, compared from 2012, driven specifically by strong results from its multiple African copper sites, as well as the Collahuasi mine in Chile, Antapaccay mine in Peru, and Ernest Henry site in Australia.
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Johnson Matthey PLC said Den Jones is joining the board as Group Finance Director, succeeding Robert MacLeod, recently appointed Chief Executive Officer of the firm. The multinational chemicals and precious metals company, said that Jones' appointment will take effect from June 5 2014. Jones was most recently at BG Group, latterly serving as Interim Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director after serving as the company's Chief Financial Officer. He left the firm in November last year.
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Anglo American PLC announced good results from its subsidiary Kumba Iron Ore Ltd's operations for the full year 2013. The major mining company said that Kumba announced a 4.6% increase in its headline earnings to USD1.60 billion for the year ended December 31 from USD1.53 billion the previous year.
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UK telecommunications industry regulator Ofcom said it has renewed the licenses for Channel 3 and Channel 5 for a further ten-year period starting January 1, 2015. The current licenses were due to expire at the end of 2014. The licenses for listed companies Channel 3 are held by ITV PLC, STV Group PLC, and UTV Media PLC. Channel 5 is owned by publisher Northern and Shell PLC. Ofcom also will create a separate licence for Wales, and a new West & South West of England licence for Channel 3 upon renewal. STV and UTV issued statements accepting Ofcom's new terms for the renewals. ITV has not yet commented. Shares of all three companies have risen on the news.
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Vodafone PLC said it was teaming up with money transfer and global payment services company MoneyGram International Inc to allow customers from around 200 countries to be able to transfer funds directly to M-Pesa mobile banking accounts. M-Pesa is a mobile payment system developed by Vodafone which allows users to pay bills, withdraw, transfer and deposit money like a traditional bank account. It is currently available in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Fiji, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania, which additional markets due to launch during 2014.
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Thomas Cook Group PLC reported a pre-tax loss of GBP161 million for the first quarter as revenue declined during the period due to lower customer demand for winter holidays to Egypt, but noted that it is confident that the summer period will meet targets. In an interim management statement for the three months to December 31, 2013, the tour operator said its pretax loss widened to GBP161 million, up from GBP123 million last year. Thomas Cook Group said revenue fell by 0.9%, a GBP15 million drop to GBP1.656 billion, down on the GBP1.671 billion reported last year. Thomas Cook said the reduced demand for Egypt holidays offset improvements in capacity management and new product growth.
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Dunelm Group PLC said pretax profit grew 2.9% to GBP61.6 million during the first-half of the year, but recorded a slight decline in like-for-like sales for the period. The homewares retailer said in its interim results for the 26 weeks to December 28, 2013 that gross margin improved during the period, up 90 basis points to 50.4%.
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MARKETS
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UK stock indices have made strong gains, led higher by the mining and retail stocks, on the back of rising precious metal prices and strong bumper retail sales data. Meanwhile Barclays leads the blue chip fallers after reporting its full-year results.
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FTSE 100: up 54.88 at 6,646.43
FTSE 250: up 108.30 at 16,019.02
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 2.20 at 868.17
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GBP-USD: up at USD1.6425
EUR-USD: up at USD1.3670

GOLD: up at USD1,284.60 per ounce
OIL (Brent): up at USD109.05 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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Retail sales in the UK rose in January, according to survey results released by the British Retail Consortium. The BRC Retail Sales Monitor showed overall retail sales were up 5.4% compared to one year earlier. Sales at stores that have been open one year or more were up 3.9% on year, BRC said. The same-store sales figure marked a sharp increase from the 0.4% growth in December. The January 2014 same-store sales increase was the strongest gain since April 2011, BRC said.
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The new organisation set to be established by the end of the year in order to raise standards in UK banking would provide a "canopy" under which existing professional bodies would continue to develop and grow, with the goal of moving the industry towards the same sort of professional standards seen in medicine and accounting, the Chair of the Banking Standards Review Richard Lambert, said in a consultation paper. Lambert, previously Director General of the CBI, pointed to the tough minimum entry qualifications required by other industries, saying that rewarding members who have built up specific knowledge and skills thresholds with 'chartered' status can build up credibility, because the qualifications become highly sought after by both industry organisations and individuals within them.
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The EU will review its relations with Switzerland as a result of a Swiss referendum decision to curb migration, top politicians said Monday, warning the country that it cannot pick and choose among its treaty obligations towards the EU. A slim majority of voters in Switzerland, a non-EU country, voted Sunday in favour of introducing quotas for foreigners, which runs counter to existing Swiss-EU agreements on free movement.
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EU foreign ministers insisted Monday on dialogue and political reforms to solve Ukraine's crisis, but left the prospect of sanctions on the table, at talks that also prepared for a troop deployment to Central African Republic. The EU has increased its diplomatic activity with Kiev, as mass protests there have at times turned violent since Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych backed away from an association deal with the bloc last year, favouring closer ties to Russia.
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Several south-eastern US states braced Monday for another winter storm, less than two weeks after ice and snow paralyzed Atlanta and other cities. A major winter storm will affect parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina through mid-week, the National Weather Service said. The area could get as much as a 2-centimetre layer of ice on the roads, the weather service warned. Power outages caused by iced-over tree limbs falling on electrical wires were also likely. Georgia's capital, Atlanta, which was among the worst-affected cities two weeks ago, declared a state of emergency and cancelled school on Tuesday and Wednesday.
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The presidents of France and the US Monday toured the Virginia residence of the nation's third president - Francophile Thomas Jefferson - in a symbolic jaunt intended to seal the two countries' long history of commitment to democracy and liberty. The visit kicked off a two-day state visit by French President Francois Hollande, who flew to Charlottesville, Virginia, with President Barack Obama. On Tuesday, the leaders will meet at the White House, and Hollande will be feted at an elaborate and rare state dinner with a guest list so large that it will be held in a tent on the White House lawn.
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The White House Monday confirmed that North Korea had invited, then dis-invited, a special US human rights envoy who was to have gone to Pyongyang to discuss the fate of an imprisoned US citizen. "We are deeply disappointed by that decision," said spokesman Jay Carney. He noted that North Korea had vowed in May 2013 "not to use the fate of (prisoner) Kenneth Bae as a political bargaining chip."
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Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders are scheduled to relaunch peace talks on Tuesday in an effort to end Cyprus' decades-old division. Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and his rival Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu will meet for the first time in nearly two years at an abandoned airport compound located in the buffer zone of the island's divided capital city, Nicosia. The two leaders, together with a UN envoy, are expected to unveil a roadmap and sign a joint declaration outlining the basic principles that should govern a settlement.
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A Taiwanese minister arrived in China Tuesday for the highest-level talks between the two governments in more than 60 years, media reports said. Accompanied by about 20 officials, Mainland Affairs Council minister Wang Yu-chi is scheduled to meet his counterpart, China's Taiwan Affairs Office cirector Zhang Zhijun, in the city of Nanjing at 2 pm (0600 GMT), according to Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA).
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US ambassador to India Nancy Powell will meet opposition leader Narendra Modi, officials said, ending Washington's nine-year boycott of the Hindu nationalist leader. "This is part of our concerted outreach to senior political and business leaders which began in November to highlight the India-US relationship," US embassy spokesman Peter Vrooman said. Modi, chief minister of the western state of Gujarat and head of the Bhartiya Janata Party, has been blamed by human rights organizations for complicity in anti-Muslim riots that killed about 1,000 people in 2002.
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