Vodafone Share News (VOD)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Thursday.
----------
COMPANIES
----------
Shares in online takeaway service Just Eat PLC started conditional dealings respectably above its offer price, after it became the latest online firm to list on London's main market. Just Eat shares were quoted at 285 pence per share Thursday, 9.6% above its IPO price of 260p. Just Eat raised GBP360.1 million via an initial public offering of 138.5 million new and existing shares, 24.6% of the company's entire share capital, giving it a market capitalisation at the IPO price of GBP1.47 billion. It said that it will receive GBP100 million of the gross proceeds from the offer, with the remainder going to selling shareholders.
----------
Shareholders of the UK's biggest sporting goods retailer by revenue, Sports Direct International PLC, have rejected a GBP72.5 million share bonus package for Mike Ashley, the company's founder, deputy chairman and biggest shareholder. The package was due to be put to a vote on Friday at an annual general meeting, to consider the proposed supplemental executive bonus share scheme. However the retailer late Wednesday cancelled the meeting and vote after the proposal failed to gather enough shareholder support.
----------
Tate & Lyle PLC said its operating profit for the year just ended will be lower, as sweetener volumes in both of its divisions were held back by a soft US beverage sector. In a trading statement on February 13, the group had said that adjusted pretax profit for the third quarter came in lower than expectations, as volume and sales growth in its SPLENDA Sucraclose sweetener remained in line with first-half levels and its expectations.
----------
Europe's largest home improvement retailer Kingfisher PLC said it is in exclusive negotiations to acquire French home improvement retail chain Mr Bricolage, for an overall enterprise vale of around EUR275 million. Kingfisher, which owns and operates the brands B&Q, Screwfix and Castorama and Brico Dépôt in France, said it has started exclusive negotiations with the principal shareholders of Mr Bricolage to acquire their shareholdings.
----------
Vodafone PLC confirmed plans to invest GBP100 million in the UK to open 150 new retail shops and create 1,400 jobs, as it ramps up its investment programme in the country. Vodafone plans to invest GBP1 billion during 2014 in its UK networks and services. Vodafone said work was already "well under way" on its commitment to providing indoor and outdoor coverage of 2G, 3G and 4G services to 98% of the UK's population by 2015.
----------
SOCO International PLC said it has hired Anya Weaving as its new Chief Financial Officer, effective May 1, 2014. Weaving joins the company from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where she was a Managing Director in Mergers and Acquisitions, responsible for the oil and gas sector.
----------
MARKETS
----------
Stock indices across the UK are mixed, showing little reaction to Chinese stimulus measures announced overnight.
----------
FTSE 100: down 0.1% at 6655.4
FTSE 250: down 0.2% at 16388.01
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 0.1% at 852.36
----------
The pound has slipped to a weekly low against the dollar, following a weaker-than-expected reading of the UK service industry. The euro down against the dollar ahead of the the ECB interest rate decision.
----------
GBP-USD: down at USD1.3762
EUR-USD: down at USD1.6602

GOLD: down at USD1285.78 per ounce
OIL (Brent): down at USD104.48 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
----------
ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
----------
The UK service sector growth slowed unexpectedly to a nine-month low in March, survey data showed. The services Purchasing Managers' Index fell to 57.6, the lowest level since June 2013, from 58.2 in February, Markit Economics said. The score was expected remain unchanged at 58.2. Although the index signaled another period of sharp activity growth, the score fell for a fifth month in a row and posted its lowest level since June 2013.
----------
The European Central Bank is set to leave interest rates at the historic low of 0.25%, despite renewed fears of deflation. The region's cost of living slumped to a more-than-four-year low of 0.5% in March, compared with 0.7% in February, the European Statistics Office Eurostat said Monday. This took consumer prices deeper into what ECB chief Mario Draghi has called the "danger zone" of an inflation rate below 1%.
----------
International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde called Wednesday for easing of monetary policy in the EU. She cited the risk of low inflation in advanced economies as an obstacle to short-term global growth, but insisted the issue was not deflation. "There is the emerging risk of what I call 'low-flation', particularly in the euro area," Lagarde said in an address at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "A potentially prolonged period of low inflation can suppress demand and output - and suppress growth and jobs," she said. "More monetary easing, including through unconventional measures, is needed in the euro area to raise the prospects of achieving the (European Central Bank's) price stability objective."
----------
Eurozone retail sales volume expanded unexpectedly in February from the prior month, data showed. Driven by food and non-food product sales, retail sales grew 0.4% on a monthly basis in February, Eurostat reported. Economists were expecting sales to fall 0.5% after recovering last month.
----------
China announced slew of measures to bring the economic recovery on track to achieve this year's 7.5% growth target. The three major initiatives announced by the State Council on Wednesday include reforms in railway, the urban redevelopment program and tax breaks for small and micro enterprises.
----------
The service sector in China expanded at a faster pace in March, the latest PMI from HSBC and Markit Economics revealed on Thursday, coming in with a four-month high score of 51.9. That's up from 51.0 in February, and it moves farther above the boom-or-bust line of 50 that separates expansion from contraction.
----------
British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), on Wednesday traded increasingly bitter jibes during a live televised debate about Britain's membership of the EU. Clegg, the leader of the pro-EU Liberal Democrat party, accused Farage several times of indulging in "fantasy" and said the UKIP leader's arguments for quitting the bloc were a "dangerous con." Farage responded that the majority of Britons did not want to be part of a political union within the EU but that an exit was being blocked by people like Clegg, who was part of a "career political class" with "friends in big business." The two men were taking part in the second of two debates on whether Britain should remain in the EU.
----------
Growth in the Irish service sector regained momentum at the end of the first quarter of 2014, data from Markit Economics showed. The seasonally adjusted Purchasing Managers' Index rose to 60.7 in March from 57.5 in February. The score above 50 indicates expansion in the sector. Activity has now risen in each of the past 20 months.
----------
NATO's decision to suspend cooperation with Russia on civilian and military matters is regrettable as it benefits neither the military alliance nor Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. NATO's move was announced Tuesday in Brussels by its foreign ministers, who raised the possibility of deployments as part of their response to the Ukrainian crisis. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said the language of the ministers' statement was reminiscent of vocabulary used during the Cold War. NATO's decision will benefit terrorists and organized crime and will complicate response efforts in future natural disasters, the spokesman said.
----------
Four people were reported to have been killed Wednesday in shooting at a US Army base in Texas and the base remained on lockdown as military police went building to building searching for others involved. The shooter was among the four dead, said US Representative Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Unidentified government officials told the Washington Post at least four were dead. The shooter has been identified by multiple government sources as Army Specialist Ivan Lopez, the newspaper said. Fourteen people were injured, McCaul told CNN. Fort Hood was the scene of a shooting rampage five years ago in which 13 people were shot dead and dozens were injured.
----------
The death toll from the mudslide in the US state of Washington rose to 29 Wednesday, as President Barack Obama issued a federal disaster declaration to help the obliterated town of Oso recover from the catastrophe.
----------
US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Afghan presidential candidates, their supporters and election authorities to make sure voting Saturday is conducted legally, even as an attack took place in the war-torn country's capital. At least six police officers were killed Wednesday when a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform blew himself up in front of the Interior Ministry in Kabul, the government said.
----------
The number of Syrians registered as refugees in Lebanon has surpassed one million, making the country the highest per-capita concentration of refugees worldwide, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said. "The influx of a million refugees would be massive in any country. For Lebanon, a small nation beset by internal difficulties, the impact is staggering," UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement. Refugees from Syria, half of them children, now equal a quarter of Lebanon's resident population, most of them live in dire conditions and depend on aid for survival, according to the agency.
----------
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak joined his Australian counterpart Tony Abbott in an inspection of the air force base in Perth that is serving as the centre of a huge international operation to find missing flight MH370. Welcoming Najib to Pearce Air Force base north of Perth, the search coordinator, former Air Force chief Angus Houston, said the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines airliner was "one of the most complex operations the world has ever seen."
----------
Global food prices rose to a 10-month high in March due to bad weather in the US and Brazil and tensions in Ukraine, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said. FAO's Food Price Index increased by 2.3% from February, to 212.8 points.
----------
Copyright © 2014 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.