WPP Share News (WPP)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Thursday.
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COMPANIES
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Standard Life late Wednesday said it is selling its Canadian business for GBP2.2 billion in a deal that leaves the company expecting to return GBP1.75 billion to shareholders, while the remaining GBP450.0 million will be retained for general corporate purposes. In a statement, the FTSE 100 long-term savings and investment business said it is selling its Canadian long-term savings and retirement, individual and group insurance business and Canadian investment management business to The Manufacturers Life Insurance Co, a subsidiary of Manulife Financial Corp for CAD4.0 billion at closing. The sale is expected to generate a one-off gain of GBP1.2 billion for Standard Life.
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Centrica said its earnings per share for 2014 will be hit harder than expected by the boiler inspection undertaken by EDF Energy at the Heysham 1 and Hartlepool nuclear power stations. Centrica holds a 20% stake in EDF Energy's existing nuclear operations. On the basis of the latest estimates for returning the reactors to service, and the associated costs, Centrica's 2014 earnings per share are now expected to lower by between 0.6 and 0.9 pence per share, including the 0.3 pence per share reduction announced on August 11, Centrica said.
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WPP said its JWT unit has acquired a majority stake in Cairos Usabilidade Eireli, known at Try, in Brazil for an undisclosed amount. Try is a user experience agency which designs and develops custom web, mobile, desktop and touch-enabled applications.
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Low-cost airline easyJet and Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus Group both reported higher traffic figures for August compared with a year earlier. FTSE 100-listed easyJet said it had carried 6.6 million passengers in August, up 8.4% on the year, pushing up its load factor - a measure of how full its planes are - by 1.4 percentage points to 94.2% for the month. The airline flew 64.3 million passengers in the 12 months to end-August, up 6.4% on the 60.5 million reported for the previous 12 months. Aer Lingus said its traffic, measured in revenue passenger kilometres, rose 13% in August, buoyed by a further 28% increase in long-haul traffic, and a 2.8% increase in short-haul traffic.
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Balfour Beatty said it has sold its US project management business Parsons Brinckerhoff to WSP Global Inc for GBP820 million in cash, a good return on the roughly GBP380 million it bought the business for in 2009 and more than analysts had expected. Parsons Brinckerhoff proved the key stumbling block to a failed merger approach by rival Carillion PLC, after Carillion's attempts to stop the sale were rejected by Balfour. Analysts had put a price tag of up to GBP650 million on Parson Brinckerhoff.
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Serco Group said it has been selected as the preferred bidder to continue providing onshore immigration services to the Australian government, a contract that has proved problematic in the past because it provided less work than initially expected. Australia's Department of Immigration and Border Protection said Serco has been selected as the preferred bidder to retain its contract to provide facilities and detainee services, the company said in a statement.
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Bus and rail company Go-Ahead Group reported higher profit and revenue for its last financial year as both operations performed better than it had originally hoped, and said that the current financial year has also got off to a good start with trading in line with its hopes. The company, recently buoyed when it was awarded the huge new rail franchise covering a swathe of southeast England, reported a pretax profit of GBP91.2 million for the year ended June 28, up from GBP63.1 million a year earlier, as revenue rose to GBP2.70 billion, from GBP2.57 billion, and its operating profit margin increased. Go-Ahead raised its final dividend for the year to 59.0 pence, from 55.5 pence, bringing the total for the year to 84.5 pence, compared with 81.0 pence.
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SuperGroup said it remains on track to deliver profitable growth in the full year as it posted a rise in group revenue in the first quarter of its fiscal year, with positive performances from its wholesale and retail arms and a gradual improvement in like-for-like retail sales against strong comparatives. The owner of the Superdry brand said group revenue for the period between April 27 and July 26 hit GBP87 million, up 16% from the GBP75.1 million posted a year earlier.
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Alent saw its shares drop after it said Steve Corbett will step down as chief executive, with Rick Ertmann becoming interim chief executive. Ertmann, currently president of the Assembly Materials Division at Alent, will take on the position in an interim capacity while the company launches the process of identifying a permanent replacement. Corbett became chief executive of Alent in 2012 following its demerger from Cookson Group, and oversaw the listing of the company.
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MARKETS
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UK indices are largely mixed as investors wait for the Bank of England's interest rate decision at midday, with the FTSE100 continuing to trade near its 14-year high, led by standout gainer Standard Life, which is up 8.0%.
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FTSE 100: up 0.2% at 6,883.81
FTSE 250: down 0.3% at 15,946.96
AIM ALL-SHARE: down 0.3% at 776.71
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The euro currently trades flat ahead of the much-anticipated European Central Bank interest rate decision and press conference at 1245 BST and 1330 BST respectively.
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GBP-USD: flat at USD1.6459
EUR-USD: flat at USD1.3144

GOLD: up at USD1272.29 per ounce
OIL (Brent): up at USD102.48 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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Germany's manufacturing orders rebounded strongly in July, far exceeding economists' expectations, figures from the Federal Statistical Office showed. Factory orders increased a seasonally adjusted 4.6% from June, when they fell 2.7%, revised from a 3.2% decline. Economists had expected a 1.5% gain for July.
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Unemployment in France increased marginally, as expected, in the second quarter, a report from statistical institute INSEE showed. The jobless rate, measured according to International Labour Organisation, or ILO, standards, edged up to 10.2% in the second quarter from 10.1% in the first quarter, in line with the consensus estimate. This was still close to the 15-year high of 10.3% recorded in the third quarter of 2013.
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US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron have said their countries "will not be cowed by barbaric killers", following the beheading of a second American journalist by Islamic State militants. In an opinion piece for The Times newspaper published hours before a NATO summit was due to get underway in Wales, the two leaders said NATO "must strengthen its alliance." Those who advocated an isolationist approach "misunderstand the nature of security in the 21st century", they wrote.
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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was Thursday due to meet NATO leaders on the sidelines of the NATO summit, as pro-Russian separatists and government troops continued to fight in the country's east despite the announcement of a peace deal. Artillery shelling hit the city of Donetsk, and at least one apartment house was hit, local authorities said. The city was left without mains after a sewage plant was hit. Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported that separatist militias were still battling for control of Donetsk airport. Russian media had earlier reported that government forces, who held the airport since May, had given up. The fighting was taking place despite the announcement Wednesday of a truce deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Poroshenko following five months of fighting in eastern Ukraine.
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The Bank of Japan kept its monetary policy unchanged at its September meeting, the central bank announced in a statement following the conclusion of its 2-day monetary policy meeting. The Bank also announced its decision to retain its policy of expanding monetary base at an annual rate of 60-70 trillion yen. Also, the Bank lefts its asset purchase policy unchanged.
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US banking regulators established rules Wednesday that set the quantity of liquid, high-grade assets that banks must hold in reserve against a future credit crunch. The central bankers at the Federal Reserve voted to implement the rules, which are aimed at combating lending panics similar to the 2008 Wall Street credit crisis. Wednesday's change establishes "for the first time a liquidity rule applicable to the entire balance sheet of large banking organizations," Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo said.
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Ebola fatalities have reached 1,900, an increase of about 400 over last week's gruesome tally, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday. WHO estimated that at least USD600 million in aid is needed to control the epidemic if transmission of the lethal virus is to be shut down within the next six to nine months.
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By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com; @ArvindBhunjun

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