Taylor Wimpey Share News (TW.)

LONDON (Alliance News) - Disposals are on the agenda Monday, with mining giant Anglo American set to sell its 50% stake in UK joint venture Lafarge Tarmac Holdings to French partner Lafarge while brewer SABMiller has decided to offload its entire 39.6% stake in South African gaming, hotel and entertainment group Tsogo Sun Holdings Ltd.

Anglo American said it will sell the Tarmac stake for a minimum of GBP885 million in cash, using the proceeds to pay down some of its debt.

Lafarge is merging with Swiss peer Holcim, and intends to take full control of Lafarge Tarmac and then sell it all as a remedy to ensure its Holcim deal gets cleared by the European Union antitrust regulator. The two cement makers are being forced to shed a large range of assets so that the merger meets European competition rules.

Meanwhile, brewing giant SABMiller said it hope to sell its whole stake in Tsogo Sun, valued at about ZAR11.7 billion, or about USD1.09 billion, by selling 305 million shares in a secondary placing into the market, and through a deal whereby Tsogo Sun will buy back about 130 million shares for ZAR2.8 billion or about USD260 million.

SABMiller will plough the proceeds back into its brewing operations. It no longer considers hotels and entertainment as core to what it does.

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MARKETS: Stocks indices are trading modestly lower across the UK and Europe, with the mining stocks leading the fallers as precious metal prices continue to soften. Investors are also expecting another downgrade to global growth forecasts by the International Monetary Fund after comments from chief Christine Lagarde at a conference over the weekend.

US stock futures are also currently pointing to a fractionally lower start on Wall Street.

FTSE 100: down 0.2% at 6,853.83
FTSE 250: down 0.6% at 15,955.55
AIM ALL-SHARE: down 0.2% at 789.04
GBP-USD: down at 1.7123
EUR-USD: flat at 1.3590
GOLD: down at USD1,3113.40 an ounce
OIL (Brent): up at USD110.64 a barrel
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Other Top UK Corporate News
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Another exploration well on the Butch license in the Norwegian North Sea is being plugged and abandoned after failing to strike oil. The license is operated and 40% owned by Centrica, while Faroe Petroleum has a 15% stake and Tullow Oil a 15% stake. It's the second failure to strike oil at the license in the last couple of months, meaning the exploration area hasn't been extended to the east or southwest. The partners will now focus on commercialising the Butch Main oil field.
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Housebuilder Taylor Wimpey echoed peers, citing the recovery in the UK housing market for a strong first half of 2014, with sales and pricing at the upper end of its expectations. All of the UK's major housebuilders have reported an accelerating recovery in the UK housing market through 2013 and into this year, particularly in the southeast of England, where Taylor Wimpey has high exposure. Taylor Wimpey said customer confidence remains high, while visitor levels remain strong. It said during the first half it achieved an average private net reservation rate of 0.71 per outlet per week, compared with 0.67 per outlet per week a year earlier. Average selling price of completions increased to GBP206,000 from GBP188,000, while the average selling price on private completions increased 9% to GBP224,00 from GBP205,000.
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Private hospitals group Spire Healthcare Group announced the expected price range for its initial public offering, whilst fellow healthcare company Abzena priced its IPO and technology company ClearStar announced plans to float on AIM. Spire Healthcare announced the expected price range of its planned initial public offering will be between 210 pence and 300 pence per share. On the smaller AIM market, life sciences company Abzena priced its initial public offering at 80 pence, giving it a market capitalisation of GBP77.9 million. The company said it has provisionally raised GBP20 million through the offering of 25 million new shares at 80 pence at this price. It expects to begin trading on AIM Thursday. ClearStar announced plans to float on AIM. It said that it believes an AIM listing will enhance its credibility and profile within its market place and help grow its business.
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AIM MOVERS
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Metminco shares have jumped on AIM following an earlier sharp rise on the Australian Securities Exchange on Monday. The company said it was unaware why its shares rallied sharply or why trading volumes were high in Australia. Trakm8 Holdings shares are up after the company said pretax profit rose in its last financial year, as revenue almost doubled thanks to acquisitions, new contract wins, and like-for-like order growth. Legendary Investments also trades higher after Bosques Energeticos EBE SA de CV, one of its portfolio companies, secured more land on which to grow its recently cultivated non-toxic, high-yielding G4J jatropha. Shares in Octagonal have risen after the company said its principle investment, custody and clearing company, Global Investment Strategy UK Ltd, had a record month in June, with over GBP1.1 billion of transactions completed on behalf of its clients. At the other end of the market, Landore Resources shares have dropped after the company said it has raised GBP2.6 million through an oversubscribed placing and subscription, money it will use to fund a 6,000 metre drilling programme to test prospective targets it identified in a previous 3D survey at its Junior Lake property in Ontario, Canada. Noricum Gold also trades lower after it said it has received approval for a 2,500 metre surface drilling programme at the Altenberg target area of its Rotgulden gold project in Austria through November 2018.
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Top Economics And General
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German industrial production declined unexpectedly in May, official data indicated. Industrial output fell 1.8% in May from the prior month, Destatis reported. This was the third consecutive fall in production. Economists had forecast a 0.2% rise after declining by revised 0.3% in April.
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International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde indicated a slight reduction to the institution's global growth outlook as investment remains subdued. The global economic outlook to be released later this month would be "slightly different" from previous forecasts, Lagarde said at the Cercle des Economists conference in Aix-en-Provence, France on Sunday. Nonetheless, she said the global activity is expected to gain momentum in the second half of the year and to accelerate further in 2015 after an unexpectedly weak start to 2014.
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Britain's chancellor and foreign secretary began a visit to India for talks on trade and defence with the newly elected government. George Osborne and William Hague arrived in the financial hub of Mumbai where they were slated to meet business leaders. On Tuesday, they were to travel to New Delhi for discussions with Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Finance and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley before meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "The purpose of our India visit is to build even stronger diplomatic and economic ties - good for jobs and growth in both countries," Hague wrote on his Twitter account.
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Berlin stepped up the pressure on Washington over allegations of spying in Germany by a suspected double agent with Chancellor Angela Merkel describing the claims as serious and a possible breach of trust between the two allies. "If the reports are correct, it would be a serious case," Merkel told a joint press conference with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing. She said the incident "would represent for me a clear contradiction as to what I consider to be trusting cooperation between agencies and partners." The claims that a German intelligence agent had given sensitive information to the US authorities follow a stream of reports about US spying in Germany.
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The US warned Sunday that travellers who show up at overseas airports with electronic devices must be able to turn them on if asked to do so. "Powerless devices will not be permitted onboard the aircraft," the Transportation Security Administration warned. The move appeared to be connected to a rash of concern about threats to US-bound flights.
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Ukraine's military advanced Sunday on the industrial city of Donetsk, where pro-Russian separatists were digging in after losing Sloviansk a day earlier. President Petro Poroshenko called the recapture of the rebel stronghold a "turning point" in weeks of fighting and ordered the continuation of the offensive. The taking of Sloviansk occurred on the day Ukraine and Russia had agreed would be the deadline for starting talks on a long-term ceasefire, but those talks failed to materialize. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a phone call with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that it was "of grave concern" that the talks between Ukrainian authorities and the rebels had not taken place, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
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Sunni militants stormed a church in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday and kidnapped two priests and a nun, witnesses said. Militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant jihadist group have in recent weeks seized large parts of northern and western Iraq, including Mosul, as well as a string of towns stretching south towards Baghdad. Fighters of ISIL, an al-Qaeda splinter group, also took control of parts in eastern Syria, and claim to have opened the borders between the two countries to establish their own Islamic caliphate.
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Israeli airstrikes killed nine Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip overnight, officials said Monday. Israel bombed a site belonging to the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement in control of the Gaza Strip, in the area of a defunct airport outside the town of Rafah, near the Israeli border. The bodies of six fighters were found before dawn Monday, Gaza emergency services chief Ashraf al-Qedra told reporters. They were found in a tunnel dug by the Brigades, Hamas-run al-Aqsa television said. Three others reportedly died in Israeli strikes, which were launched in response to more than 25 rocket attacks from Gaza on Sunday and at least a dozen more on Monday.
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Somalia's radical Islamist group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for two attacks overnight on the Kenyan coast that police and Red Cross said Sunday left 22 people dead. The shootings took place in the town of Hindi in Lamu County, the site of an attack last month by the militants that left more than 60 people dead. A separate assault took place in Gamba, in neighbouring Tana River County.
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Nigerian security forces confirmed the escape of 63 women abducted by the Islamist terror group Boko Haram last month, local media reported. They managed to flee after their captors left to launch an attack at the weekend against Nigeria's army in Damboa, in the troubled northern Borno State, the Premium Times newspaper reported. "We don't have the details of their escape yet, but we believe God gave them the opportunity at the time the insurgents came in large numbers to attack Damboa," Abbas Gava, a member of a Civilian Task Force set up to help the army halt Boko Haram, was quoted as saying. Between five and seven women remained in captivity, according to Gava, one of them a nursing mother.
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Afternoon Watchlist (all times British Summer Time)
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15:00 UK NIESR GDP Estimate
20:00 US Consumer Credit Change $26.85B
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Tuesday's Key UK Corporate Events
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Ferrexpo Production Report
Dunelm Group Trading Statement
Bovis Homes Group Trading Statement
Marks & Spencer Group Interim Management Statement
SIG Trading Statement
Connect Group Interim Management Statement
XP Power Trading Statement
Young & Co's Brewery Trading Statement
Synety Group Trading Statement
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Tuesday's Key Economic Events (all times British Summer Time)
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00:50 Japan Trade Balance
00:50 Japan Bank lending
00:50 Japan Current Account
06:00 Japan Eco Watchers Survey
07:00 Germany Current Account
07:00 Germany Trade Balance
07:45 France Budget
07:45 France Trade Balance
09:30 UK Industrial Production
09:30 UK Manufacturing Production
12:30 US NFIB Business Optimism Index
13:55 US Redbook index
15:00 UK NIESR GDP Estimate
18:45 US Fed Minneapolis's Narayana Kocherlakota speech
20:00 US Consumer Credit Change

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