WPP Share News (WPP)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Friday.
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COMPANIES
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Rolls-Royce Holdings updated its guidance for the full year and next year, while providing medium-term guidance, as it said it now expects underlying revenue this year to be lower and said its outlook for 2015 has become more challenging. The aerospace group said it expects underlying revenue for the full year to be 3.5% to 4% lower, compared to previous guidance of flat revenue against the comparable year. This includes adverse foreign exchange translation for the group estimated at GBP500 million, the same as it has previously announced.
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A subsidiary of WPP has taken legal action to prevent the UK government from moving a GBP400 million contract to a competitor and has obtained a court order to block public access to information on the case, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. WPP's GroupM filed a claim in the High Court in London last month to challenge a decision by the government to award a contract, worth GBP100 million per year over four years, to Carat, an agency owned by rival Dentsu Aegis Network Ltd.
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Petrofac said it has received record awards for its engineering, construction, operations and management (ECOM) activities as it remains on track to hit profit targets for all of 2014. The company reported an order intake totalling USD9.4 billion for the year to date for its engineering, construction, operations and management sector. Its group backlog, unfinished work or customer orders that have been received but are either incomplete or in the process of completion, increased to USD21.2 billion at September 30, compared to USD20.3 billion at June 30, giving good revenue visibility for the remainder of 2014, it said in a statement.
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Old Mutual said its wealth division is acquiring Quilter Cheviot, which is known for serving the affluent and high-net-worth segments of the UK private client market, for up to GBP585 million, in a move to bolster its own discretionary investment management capabilities. Old Mutual expects the deal to meet the group's return on equity target of 12% to 15% and generate annual group synergies of GBP15 million by 2017. According to Old Mutual, Quilter Cheviot had GBP16.2 billion of funds under management at the end of September, as well as 38,000 clients.
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Travis Perkins said the encouraging momentum in its business reported in its half-year results has continued, with total sales and like-for-like sales growing in the third quarter and trading consistent with that seen in the first half, though shares in the group dropped as the sales growth rate slowed against the first half. The FTSE 100-listed building merchant said total sales increased 6.9% in the quarter to September 30 year-on-year, with like-for-like sales increasing 5.7%. In the first half, sales increased 10.2%. The reported slowdown caused shares in the company to decline 0.6% to 1,628.00 pence in morning trade, making it one of the worst performers in the index.
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GlaxoSmithKline has said its Ebola vaccine will "come too late" for the current epidemic, the BBC reported. Ripley Ballou, the head of the FTSE 100 pharmaceuticals group's Ebola vaccine research team, said full data on the safety and efficacy of its Ebola drug would not be ready until late 2015. Glaxo is one of a number of companies attempting to fast-track a vaccine for the disease as the death tolls mounts in West Africa and as cases start to appear in Europe and the US.
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RSA Insurance Group said it has agreed to sell Italian business RSA Italy to ITAS Mutua, and expects to book a GBP28 million gain on the sale. The insurer said it has a deal to sell the entire business of the Italian branches of Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance PLC and the Sun Insurance Office Ltd, which together make up RSA Italy. In a statement, RSA said it expects to recognise a GBP28 million gain on the sale and an increase in its tangible net assets of about GBP8 million. It also said the sale will boost its Insurance Groups Directive surplus, a measure of regulatory capital, by about GBP50 million.
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Provident Financial said it is well positioned to deliver good quality growth for the whole of its current financial year as its Vanquis Bank reported growth in customers and average receivables. In a statement, Provident Financial said Vanquis Bank generated "strong growth and margins" in the UK through the third quarter of 2014, with year-on-year customer growth of 17% and average receivables growth of approximately 32%.
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Colt Group appointed Hugo Eales as its chief financial officer, with effect from November 1. Eales is the former CFO for BT Global Services, an arm of BT Group PLC. His appointment comes after Mark Ferrari decided to return to Fidelity Investments following his secondment from the US investment manager. He will step down from the Colt board as an executive director on October 31 and leave the company on December 31.
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Jimmy Choo said it would price its upcoming initial public offering at 140 pence per share, the bottom of the indicative range for the deal. The luxury shoemaker said that, based on the 140 pence per share price, the total market capitalisation of the company when conditional dealings start will be GBP545.6 million. The pricing is at the low end of its indicative range. It had originally set an offer price range of 140-180p per share, before narrowing this to 140-160p this week.
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MARKETS
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Shares across Europe have rallied on some doveish comments by US and UK central bankers, while FTSE 100-listed Rolls Royce fell 11% after downgrading its short-term guidance for a second time this year.
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FTSE 100: up 0.9% at 6,253.59
FTSE 250: up 1.5% at 14,693.85
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 1.5% at 686.47
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The pound has pushed through the USD1.60 ceiling reversing recent loses in the absence of fresh economic data.
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GBP-USD: up at USD1.6087
EUR-USD: up at USD1.2813

GOLD: down at USD1,237.34 per ounce
OIL (Brent): up at USD87.00 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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Bank of England Chief Economist Andrew Haldane said the UK interest rates could remain at a record low for a longer period than he expected three months ago. If there is a genuine uncertainty about the path of the economy, the optimal policy response may be to avoid the worst outcomes, he told local business leaders in Kenilworth, central England. He observed that the UK economy is as weak as at any time in the recent or distant past and it is firmly on the back foot. "The UK economy appears to be writhing in both agony and ecstasy," Haldane said.
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Eurozone construction output increased at a faster pace in August, data from Eurostat showed. Construction output advanced 1.5% month-on-month following a 0.3% rise in July. Building output was up 1.4% and civil engineering advanced 2.1%. Production in construction decreased 0.3% on a yearly basis, which was slower than the 0.5% drop in the prior month.
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British households perceive that the value of their home increased in October, a survey from Knight Frank and Markit Economic showed. The house price sentiment index rose to 60.7 in October from 60.6 in September. This was the nineteenth consecutive month that the reading has been above 50. Any figure above 50 indicates that prices are rising and the higher the figure, the steeper the increase.
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The EU's cap on bankers' bonuses is the "wrong policy", according to Bank of England Deputy Governor Andrew Bailey, whose criticisms come just a day after European authorities moved to stop banks from getting around the rules. Speaking at the City Banquet in London on Thursday evening, Bailey said that so-called role-based allowances are a response to a bad policy.
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European car sales grew at a faster pace in September, a monthly report released by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association showed. New passenger car sales increased 6.4% in September from last year following a 2.1% rise in August. Sales expanded for the thirteenth consecutive month.
The UK reported an increase of 5.6%.
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The Russian energy company Rosneft and a close associate of President Vladimir Putin have launched lawsuits against the EU for sanctions the bloc imposed over the conflict in Ukraine, the European Court of Justice said. The state-owned oil company and Arkady Rotenberg, a longtime friend and judo-sparring partner of Putin, filed challenges last week in the Luxembourg-based court to the economic sanctions. The EU imposed sanctions on members of Putin's inner circle in reaction to Russia's military intervention in Crimea and its alleged involvement in eastern Ukraine.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko were due to meet early Friday with European leaders in a renewed push to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The meeting is to take place on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit in the northern Italian city of Milan. It will be Putin and Poroshenko's third meeting since fighting broke out in eastern Ukraine earlier this year.
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Hong Kong police cleared another protest site early Friday after nearly three weeks of demonstrations for open elections in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. Hundreds of officers removed barricades erected in the Mong Kok commercial and residential district, dispersing protesters within an hour and without significant resistance, local news reports said.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) is reviewing Ebola preparedness in 15 African countries, in order to prevent the disease from spreading across the continent, a senior WHO official said Thursday in Geneva. The UN health agency is focusing especially on countries bordering the three Ebola-affected countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, WHO's Isabelle Nuttall said. The number of Ebola cases in the three hardest-hit countries will surpass 9,000 this week, with the number expected to double every four weeks, Nuttall said. The number of deaths will climb above 4,500 this week, she added.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com; @ArvindBhunjun

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