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LONDON (Alliance News) - There was some bad drilling news for two of the UK's leading oil stocks, as resource companies dominated corporate news Tuesday morning.
Tullow Oil PLC said it will plug and abandon the exploration well 31/2-21S in the Gotama prospect, offshore Norway.
Meanwhile, Ophir Energy saw its shares tumble to the bottom of the FTSE 250 after saying drilling at its Affanga Deep-1 well in the Gnodo block offshore Gabon had found no "significant" oil indications in its target rock formations as it encountered thinner-than-expected sandstone sections with poor reservoir characteristics.
Overall UK stocks are trading higher as investors return from a long weekend in the UK in a buying mood following gains made across Europe and Asia on Monday.
US stock futures are are indicating a higher open on Wall Street, with the S&P 500 potentially opening at a fresh all-time high when investors return from the long Memorial Day weekend.
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FTSE 100: up 0.5% at 6,850.29
FTSE 250: up 0.8% at 15,834.3
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 0.6% at 806.37
GBP-USD: down at 1.6821
EUR-USD: flat at 1.3646
GOLD: down at USD1,283.45 an ounce
OIL (Brent): down at USD109.97 a barrel
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Top UK Corporate News
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Lloyds Banking Group PLC said it intends to go ahead with an initial public offering of TSB Banking Group PLC on the London Stock Exchange in June. In a statement, Lloyds said it will offer about a quarter of the shares in TSB to both institutional and retail investors. Moving to sweeten the deal for retail investors, Lloyds said they will be offered one free share for every 20 shares acquired up to GBP2,000 and held for one year after the IPO.
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US drugmaker Pfizer Inc abandoned its pursuit to buy AstraZeneca PLC, saying it does not plan to make an offer for the British drugmaker following the rejection of its final proposal last week. In a statement released Monday, Ian Read, chairman and chief executive of Pfizer, said: "We continue to believe that our final proposal was compelling and represented full value for AstraZeneca based on the information that was available to us. As we said from the start, the pursuit of this transaction was a potential enhancement to our existing strategy." Leif Johansson, chairman of AstraZeneca, said: "We note Pfizer's confirmation that it no longer intends to make an offer for AstraZeneca. We welcome the opportunity to continue building on the momentum we have already demonstrated as an independent company."
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British oil giant BP PLC and Russian state oil company OAO Rosneft said they have signed a deal to jointly develop the Domanik shale formations in Central Russia's Volga-Urals region. The two companies will form a joint venture that will be incorporated in Russia, with Rosneft owning a 51% stake in the company and BP owning the remaining 49% stake, said the firms in a statement. Rosneft President and Chairman Igor Sechin and BP Russia President David Campbell signed the heads of agreement as part of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The signature ceremony was led by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sechin is said to be part of Putin's inner circle and has been targeted by US sanctions.
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Rio Tinto PLC has signed an investment framework for blocks three and four of the Simandou project with the government of Guinea, the Aluminium Corp of China, and the International Finance Corp. The Simandou South project, which is worth an estimated USD20 billion, is an iron ore mining development located in the south-east of Guinea and will be the largest combined iron ore and infrastructure project ever developed in Africa, said Rio Tinto. The Investment Framework provides the legal foundation for the project to move forward, said Rio Tinto, and comprises a set of documents that define the financial and commercial relations between the project's partners.
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AVEVA Group PLC upped its total dividend and expressed confidence in achieving its targets for further growth, as it saw pretax profit rise in the year to end-March. The engineering software and services proposed a total dividend of 27.0 pence, up 13% from 24 pence in the previous year. The company also paid a special dividend of 147 pence per share to shareholders in August 2013. It posted a pretax profit of GBP69.0 million, up from GBP63.5 million, as revenue rose to GBP237.3 million from GBP220.2 million, boosted by growth in its three-dimensional design platform AVEVA Everything 3D, and a strong performance in its Engineering and Design Systems division.
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Tullow Oil PLC said it will plug and abandon the exploration well 31/2-21S in the Gotama prospect, offshore Norway, after its drilling programme failed to encounter reservoir quality sandstones in the Upper Jurassic main target. The FTSE 100-listed oil company said that while the well encountered reservoir quality sandstones in the secondary targets, these intervals were water wet.
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Britain's biggest supermarket chain Tesco PLC said it has ended talks with various parties regarding potential options for its struggling Turkish business, without striking a deal. In a statement issued to the Istanbul Stock Exchange, Tesco Kipa said talks with various companies regarding partnership options have come to an end without being able "to reach an agreement," after the Turkish subsidiary said it was in first stage talks regarding its options back in February. The group did not state what the discussions had involved and said it is now focused on improving profits, reducing spending, and expanding its presence in core areas.
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AIM MOVERS
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Firestone Diamonds trades higher as the diamond development company said it is set to begin building the main treatment plant at the Liqhobong Diamond Mine in Lesotho in the coming weeks after entering into the previously arranged financing package. Ferrex is also up; the exploration and development company said high iron values have been returned from rock samples collected as part of a mapping programme in February to increase the mineralised area at its 309 square kilometres Mebaga direct shipping iron ore project in northern Gabon. Shares in Rare Earth Minerals have also been boosted after the firm exercised its option with Bacanora Minerals Limited to increase its interest in the Mexican Megalit Lithium joint venture to 30% from 10% over a maximum period of one year. Shares in Sunkar Resources plummeted as the group said it has raised USD100,000 through a new loan facility provided by majority-shareholder Sun Avenue Partners Corp, moving to secure additional working capital in order to meet payments due under its credit line with Asia Credit Bank in Kazakhstan. Trafalgar New Homes is also trading lower after the firm said it has raised GBP200,000 through the issue of 10 million shares at a price of 2 pence per share, which it will use for general working capital purposes.
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Top Economics And General
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Optimism among UK services companies rose at the fastest pace since records began in 1998, survey results from the Confederation of British Industry showed. However, the quarterly service sector survey revealed that firms are struggling to find skilled staff. With a full year of growth under their belts, service sector firms are more upbeat than they have been for a long time, Katja Hall, the CBI's deputy director general said. "The recovery continues to strengthen with both consumer and business-facing firms taking on more staff and investing in training and IT," Hall added.
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Ukrainian government forces have retaken control of Donetsk airport in the embattled east of the country, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Tuesday. "Our opponents have suffered significant losses, while we (have suffered) none," he said, adding that the military operation against the separatists will continue. The minister said a separatist training camp in neighbouring Luhansk has been destroyed by Ukrainian forces during an air strike.
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Ukrainian President-Elect Petro Poroshenko promised to reach out to the country's restive east and to Russia. The pro-Western businessman won Sunday's election with 54% of the vote, the country's election commission confirmed late Monday, with 90% of ballots counted. Former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko came in a distant second with 13% of the vote. Poroshenko announced a Western-orientated foreign policy but promised to engage in dialogue with the regions controlled by pro-Russian separatists, saying there can be no solution without Moscow.
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European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Monday the bank remains alert to the risks to a prolonged period of low inflation and expressed readiness to take action if required. At an ECB forum in Sintra, Portugal, Draghi said a prolonged period of low inflation would call for a more expansionary stance, which would also include the asset purchase programme. If a temporary shock turns more persistent, any monetary policy response might arrive too late, he said, suggesting more pre-emptive action from the central bank.
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EU politicians started haggling Monday for the bloc's top jobs, after elections that saw the conservatives and socialists remain the strongest factions in the European Parliament, but also delivered gains for anti-establishment groups. In a move aimed at boosting voter turnout, Europe's political parties for the first time have put forward lead candidates for the post of European Commission president. The EU's executive proposes laws and plays an important role in ensuring they are implemented. However, the successful nominee must now win majority backing in the parliament and among the EU's 28 governments.
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Irish Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore resigned as Labour party leader Monday, following disastrous election returns in EU Parliament and local elections. Labour, which is the junior coalition partner to ruling Fine Gael, bore the brunt of an anti-austerity protest vote in the elections. Gilmore, who has led the Labour party for seven years, said "we must hear, heed and act on the message we received on Friday." The Labour party's support fell from 13.9 to 5.3% in the European Parliament elections. That paralleled a fall in support in local elections, from 14.2% to 7.2%. The party is not set to return any members to the EU Parliament.
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Ireland's jobless rate declined in the first quarter of this year, figures from the Central Statistical Office showed Monday. The unemployment rate fell to a seasonally adjusted 12.0% in the first quarter from 12.2% in the previous three months. In the same quarter last year, the rate was 13.7%. The rate has steadily eased from a peak of 15.1% in the first quarter of 2012.
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Egyptian authorities declared a government holiday and ordered voting hours extended in the second day of the country's presidential poll, in an apparent bid to increase turnout. Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb told state television that the second and last day of voting would be a holiday for public-sector workers "in compliance with the desire of the people" to be able to vote. The moves came amid mixed reports about turnout in the polls, in which former army chief Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi is expected to easily defeat leftist candidate Hamdeen Sabahy.
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Indian Premier Narendra Modi met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on his first day in office Tuesday. He was also due to meet with eight other regional leaders who attended his inauguration Monday, according to the Ministry of External Affairs. The most significant meeting was expected to be with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, amid expectations of a thaw in relations between the nuclear-equipped rivals.
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Jordan declared Syria's ambassador to the kingdom persona non grata Monday and ordered the envoy to leave the country within 24 hours over a series of statements deemed "threatening" to the country. Shortly afterwards, Syria said it was kicking the Jordanian ambassador to Damascus out of the country in response. According to Jordanian foreign ministry spokesperson Sabah al-Rifai, the government took the decision after Bahjat Suleiman made a series of Jordan-critical statements to media outlets and on social media.
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A former minister in Thailand's ousted government was arrested in front of more than 100 foreign journalists and photographers, after openly defying a summons by the country's military rulers to turn himself in. A dozen soldiers and police escorted former education minister Chaturon Chaisaeng out of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT) shortly after he challenged the military government that seized power on Thursday. "I am willing to be arrested and to defend myself in court," Chaturon told a packed audience at the FCCT minutes before his arrest.
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Malaysia and FTSE 250 satellite data company Inmarsat released raw communications data related to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that disappeared on March 8. "Finally, after almost three months, the Inmarsat raw data is released to the public," said a post on the Facebook page of relatives of people aboard the missing aircraft, who had pushed for the information to be published. "Hope this is the original raw data and can be used to potentially 'think out of the box' to get an alternative positive outcome," it said.
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Afternoon Watchlist (all times British Summer Time)
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13:30 US Durable Goods Orders
13:55 US Redbook index
14:00 US S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices
14:45 US Markit Services PMI Preliminary
15:00 US Consumer Confidence
15:00 US Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index
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Wednesday's Key UK Corporate Events
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Brewin Dolphin Half Year Results
Telford Homes Full Year Results
McKay Securities Full Year Results
De La Rue Full Year Results
Iomart Group Full Year Results
Scapa Group Full Year Results
Caledonia Investments Full Year Results
Torotrak Full Year Results
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Wednesday's Key Economic Events (all times British Summer Time)
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01:00 Japan Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda Speech
07:00 UK Nationwide Housing Prices
07:45 France Consumer Spending
07:45 France Producer Prices
08:55 Germany Unemployment Rate
09:00 EU M3 Money Supply
09:00 EU Private loans
10:00 EU Consumer Confidence
10:00 EU Business Climate
10:00 EU Economic Sentiment Indicator
10:00 EU Industrial Confidence
10:00 EU Services Sentiment
11:00 UK CBI Distributive Trades Survey
12:00 US MBA Mortgage Applications
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Contact: +44 203 668 7440; newsroom@alliancenews.com; @AllNewsTeam