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LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Wednesday.
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COMPANIES
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Tesco it swung to a big loss in its recently-ended financial year, after booking a staggering GBP7.0 billion of impairments, writedowns and restructuring charges, as it tried to put a difficult year behind it and get back on track in a revamp that new Chief Executive Dave Lewis admitted is going to take a long time. Tesco reported a pretax loss for the year ended February 28 of GBP6.38 billion, compared with a profit of GBP2.26 billion a year earlier, as it booked GBP5.61 billion of impairments, mainly on its property portfolio, GBP570 million of stock-related charges, GBP416 million in restructuring costs, and a GBP208 million adjustment accounting for profit overstatements in previous years.
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BHP Billiton said production mainly rose across all of its segments in the third quarter and the first nine-months of the year and said it is on track to beat its original production guidance and to achieve group production growth of 16% over a two-year period before the end of 2015. The world's biggest miner said iron ore production for the third quarter rose 20% year on year to 59.0 million tonnes, whilst production for the nine months ended March 31 totalled 172.4 million tonnes, which is up 17% from a year earlier. Iron ore production for the 2015 financial year is expected to be around 2% higher than the company's previous guidance of 230.0 million tonnes.
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Rolls-Royce Holdings said Chief Executive John Rishton will retire on July 2 and be succeeded by former ARM Holdings CEO Warren East. East was CEO of chip designer ARM from 2001 to 2013, and became a non-executive director on the Rolls-Royce board in January 2014.
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Reed Elsevier reiterated its outlook for the full year, and said the simplification of its corporate structure and name change to RELX is on track to complete at the beginning of July subject to approval at its annual general meeting. Reed Elsevier said that business trends in the first quarter of 2015 remained consistent with 2014 across the group. It continued to focus on organic growth, it said, with limited acquisition activity of GBP28 million in the year to date.
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BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley has said the company has no appetite for a mega-merger, cooling speculation that the takeover of BG Group by Royal Dutch Shell will spark a wave of deals in the oil and gas industry, the Financial Times reports. The comments come amid speculation that BP itself could become a takeover target for ExxonMobil Inc, the US oil group which has long been linked to a bid for the British major.
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BP is seeking buyers for up to USD2 billion worth of its US pipelines and storage terminals as the group seeks to offload some of its non-drilling infrastructure, Bloomberg reported. BP has sent offering materials to potential buyers of two of its assets in the past fortnight, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the matter. The assets includes its interest in four pipelines and a gas plant along the Gulf of Mexico and 15 storage terminals in the Midwest and East Coast regions, the sources told Bloomberg.
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Vodafone Group has held early talks with French telecoms company Altice SA about acquiring Portuguese cable business Cabovisão, the Financial Times reported. The European Commission cleared Altice's EUR7.4 billion takeover of Portugal Telecom on Monday, on the condition it divests its existing Cabovisão and Oni businesses in Portugal.
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Hammerson said it had signed a GBP415 million unsecured revolving credit facility with a syndicate of nine banks, refinancing an existing GBP505 million facility that was set to mature in April 2016, meaning it will cut its undrawn facilities and reduce borrowing costs.
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British Land got a boost after the UK unit of Facebook Inc leased a further 66,000 square foot of space at the commercial property company's Regent's Place campus in London. British Land said Facebook has leased the fifth floor and floors nine to 16 as well as a ground floor events space at 338 Euston Road, adding to the 87,000 square feet that the US social media giant already has on the Regent's Place campus.
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Travis Perkins said total sales rose 7.2% and like-for-like sales grew 5.1% in the first quarter of 2015, keeping well ahead of its medium-term like-for-like sales growth target. The builders merchant said strong growth in its general merchanting, consumer and contracts businesses more than offset a 3.7% decline in total sales and 6.1% decline in like-for-like sales in its heating and plumbing business.
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Specialty chemicals company Croda International said 2015 has started in line with its expectations and said it expects growth to continue through the year on the back of strong performances in its Personal Care and Life Sciences businesses. Croda said its revenue in the first quarter was GBP284.9 million, compared to GBP274 million a year earlier, with the 4% growth the same in reported and constant currencies.
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Bookmaker Ladbrokes said profit in the first quarter dropped heavily on the back of unfavourable sporting results and the implementation of tax hikes in the UK, as its new chief executive pushes ahead with plans to restructure the business. Group net revenue was up 3.3% in the quarter, with UK retail net revenue up 4.3% and digital net revenue up by 9.5%, despite the latter taking a big hit from a sharp fall in revenue from its Sportsbook business which was offset by a good performance in Australia. Earnings before income and taxation in the first quarter fell to GBP14.3 million, down 22% year-on-year as a result of customer-friendly results, the implementation of the point-of-consumption tax in the UK, increased Machines Games Duty, and the company's withdrawal from unregulated digital markets in line with guidelines issued by the UK Gambling Commission.
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Galliford Try said it has been named preferred bidder by Scottish Water on its Quality and Standards IV framework. The project is anticipated to be worth a total of GBP560 million to the ESD joint venture, which comprises FTSE 250-listed Galliford, infrastructure engineering company MWH Treatment and engineering consultancy Black and Veatch.
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MARKETS
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UK shares are trading lower with investors focusing on corporate news and earnings reports amid a lack of important economic data, with the exception of the release of meeting minutes from the Bank of England, which sent the pound higher.
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FTSE 100: down 0.5% at 7,026.45
FTSE 250: down 0.5% at 17,631.47
AIM ALL-SHARE: down 0.3% at 748.79
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GBP: up at USD1.5032
EUR: up at USD1.0788

GOLD: down at USD1201.24 per ounce
OIL (Brent): down at USD61.71 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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The Bank of England's nine-member rate-setting body in April once again decided unanimously to leave the interest rate and the size of asset purchases unchanged, as policymakers took note of a strengthening in euro-area economic activity and the prospect of UK inflation turning negative in coming months. "All Committee members agreed that it was appropriate to leave the stance of monetary policy unchanged at this meeting, although two members regarded this month's decision as finely balanced," the minutes of the April 8-9 meeting said.
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Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron stepped up his attacks on a potential coalition between Labour and the Scottish National Party, as a new study claimed that Scotland will face substantial tax rises under the SNP's plans and as Labour and the Liberal Democrats traded blows on public sector pay pledges. Cameron dismissed concerns within his own party that he risked pushing Scotland towards another independence referendum by demonising the SNP, saying at a speech in Yorkshire that the SNP is not coming to Westminster with a list of demands to strengthen the UK, but rather they will be coming with the single objective of breaking up the UK.
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The Conservatives pushed into the lead in the daily YouGov poll ahead of the UK election next month, but Labour performed the same trick in the TNS survey, overturning the Tories' lead. The latest YouGov/The Sun poll has the Conservatives on 35% to Labour's 34%, with the Tories gaining two points from the survey on Tuesday to overtake their rivals. UKIP and the Liberal Democrats remained flat at 13% and 7%, respectively, in third and fourth. TNS UK, however, now has Labour in the lead, with the party gaining two points against the poll a week earlier to sit at 34%, with the Tories losing the same number of points to fall to 32%. UKIP gained a point to 15%, with the Liberal Democrats down a point to 8%.
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Japan posted a trade surplus in March for the first time in 33 months amid falling energy prices and a weaker yen, the government said. Japan's trade surplus stood at JPY229.3 billion with shipments growing 8.5% from a year earlier to JPY6.93 trillion and imports down 14.5% to JPY6.9 trillion, the Finance Ministry said in a preliminary report. The value of Japan's imports of petroleum fell 50.7% from a year earlier and those of liquefied natural gas declined 12.3%, the ministry said.
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The Greek government called on mayors to hand over their cash reserves saying the state faced a EUR400 million shortfall for the month of April to cover salaries and pensions. "We have a revenue shortfall of about EUR350-400 million that needs to be covered by the end of the month in order to meet the country's needs," said Deputy Finance Minister Dimitris Mardas told private Mega TV. "We call on all mayors to revise their stance," he said. The government earlier this week issued an emergency decree to confiscate cash reserves estimated at EUR2 billion from local authorities. The government wants the cash to be transferred to the central bank where it can be used to cover debt payments.
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The military coalition led by Saudi Arabia against Yemen's Houthi rebels Tuesday claimed success in its air campaign and said the current operation would end at midnight. Coalition spokesman Ahmed Asiri said Operation Decisive Storm had eliminated the heavy weapons and ballistic missiles held by the mainly Shiite Houthis and allied military units. The new operation would focus on preventing the movement of Houthi militias, protecting civilians, and supporting aid and relief efforts, he said at the coalition's daily press briefing in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
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