TOP NEWS: Kingfisher Calls Off Mr Bricolage Deal, Shares Rise

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Monday.
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COMPANIES
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Kingfisher Group said its deal to acquire French building product company Mr Bricolage will not proceed amid shareholder and board opposition to the terms of the deal. Kingfisher, the owner of B&Q and Screwfix, entered into a deal in July last year to acquire Mr Bricolage for EUR275 million. Last week, it warned the deal may be under threat after ANPF, which holds a 41.9% stake in the business, and Mr Bricolage's board have reservations about the deal. Kingfisher is the best-performing stock on the FTSE 100 Monday morning.
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Compass Group said it is having a strong first half to its financial year with expected organic revenue growth towards 5.5% and operating profit margin improvement of around 10 basis points. The company said it is seeing "good levels of new business, high retention rates, and modest like-for-like revenue growth" for the half year to March 31. Currency movements are forecast to boost half year revenue by GBP35 million and profit by GBP5 million. The company also said it intends to continue its existing share buyback programme.
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Travis Perkins intends to appoint KPMG as its new auditor, replacing Deloitte LLP which has been auditing the company's books for over 30 years, as the turnover of auditors in London's blue-chip index continued. The appointment of KPMG will need to be approved by Travis Perkins shareholders at its annual general meeting on May 28.
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Rolls-Royce Holdings said Air China has selected the British company's Trent 1000 engines and its aftercare support to power 15 new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft, building on a relationship the two companies already have and adding to Rolls-Royce's USD1 billion order book.
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Randgold Resources said its ore reserves increased in 2014 while its mineral resources fell, and it has ensured all of its operations are profitable at a gold price of USD1,000 an ounce. Ore reserves were up 0.8% in 2014 to 15.2 million ounces while total mineral resources fell by 3% to 27.8 million ounces. The changes came due to the FTSE-100 miner continuing exploration and through resource conversion, it said.
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Babcock International Group said it still expects its full-year results to be in line with the expectations it set out in February after continuing to make "strong progress". The company is hosting a seminar for analysts and investors later Monday to discuss its mission critical services business, part of its international division, and re-iterated its guidance ahead of that meeting.
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Vodafone Group said bank card payments via its Wallet mobile payments product will be enabled in European markets from the second quarter of 2015, after it signed new agreements with Visa and Carta Worlwide. The service, which requires a Vodafone NFC SIM, will be supported on a wide range of Android smartphones. Customers just need to input their bank cards to the Vodafone Wallet app, where an alias of each card is stored securely, and confirm ownership of the card using Verified by Visa authentication. They then pay by tapping their phones against a contactless point-of-sale terminal.
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Land Securities Group said it has signed a new USD1.26 billion revolving credit facility that extends the duration of its bank facilities and reduces the costs of them. The five-year deal can be extended to seven years at the company's request and upon approval from the banks involved. It replaces the FTSE 100-listed property investor's existing GBP1.09 billion syndicated revolving credit facility.
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Abu Dhabi-based healthcare provider Al Noor Hospitals Group said its pretax profit and revenue both rose in 2014 as the group further expanded its operations. Al Noor said its pretax profit rose to USD83.9 million from USD61.5 million in 2013, with revenue increasing 23% to USD449.1 million from USD365 million. Outpatient volumes rose to around 2 million in 2014, up from 1.7 million a year earlier, while inpatient volumes also increased to 42,033 from 40,475.
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Serco Group is selling Great Southern Rail to Australian private equity firm Allegro Funds for GBP2.5 million in cash, as part of its disposal programme of businesses identified as not being core to its future strategy. The company's 2014 strategy review identified that Great Southern Rail, which runs tourist services in Australia, was not aligned with its future strategy given its "historical lack of profitability" as well as "limited synergies" with the rest of Serco's transport portfolio.
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Australian law firm Slater & Gordon has struck a deal to acquire the professional services arm of AIM-listed insurance technology company Quindell for GBP637 million upfront. Slater & Gordon will pay a further, currently undisclosed, earn-out based on the performance of the professional services division's legacy noise-induced hearing loss cases. Slater & Gordon said it will raise around AUD890 million in new equity to part-fund the deal via a fully-underwritten two-for-three pro rata accelerated renounceable entitled offer. The balance will be funded through a fully-underwritten bank deal, it added. The law firm said the deal is condition on the approval of Quindell shareholders, with a vote scheduled to take place on April 17. The board of Quindell has unanimously recommended shareholders vote in favour of the deal, Slater & Gordon said.
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MARKETS
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UK stocks are trading higher following a strong trading session in Asia on the back of doveish comments from the Governor of the People's Bank of China.
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FTSE 100: up 0.5% at 6,890.14
FTSE 250: up 0.5% at 17,240.10
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 0.2% at 719.09
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The pound is down against the dollar despite UK mortgage approvals rising to a six-month high in February.
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GBP-USD: down at USD1.4827
EUR-USD: down at USD1.0848

GOLD: down at USD1187.53 per ounce
OIL (Brent): down at USD55.73 a barrel

(changes since end of previous GMT day)
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ECONOMICS AND GENERAL
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UK mortgage approvals rose to a six-month high in February, the Bank of England reported. The number of mortgages approved for house purchases rose to 61,760 in February from 60,707 in January. This was the highest since August and above the expected level of 61,000. IHS Global Insight's Chief UK Economist Howard Archer said the rise in mortgage approvals supports the belief that housing market weakness has bottomed out and activity is now gradually turning around.
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Three days of negotiations between Greece and its creditors on a list of reforms Athens says will boost state revenues by EUR3 billion yielded no breakthrough, participants in the talks said Sunday in Brussels. Instead of the promised concrete list of reforms, the Greek delegation presented documents in electronic form on mobile devices - written only Greek. "The list is much too vague, not credible and not verifiable," said one EU diplomat about the Greek government proposals, which were presented orally.
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A Saudi-led coalition intensified airstrikes against Houthi rebel military targets in Yemen Sunday. The Shiite rebels have taken control of large parts of the impoverished country and are seen as being backed by Iran, Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia's regional rival. Coalition jets bombed a supply route used by the Shiite rebels in an area linking the central province of Baida and the southern province of Shabwa, according to Naser al-Kadem, a tribal leader in Shabwa. He did not report casualties. However, Al-Kadem told dpa that dozens of the Houthis were killed in Behan, a key city of Shabwa, during fighting with tribal insurgents backing internationally recognized President Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi.
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China has room to ease monetary policy further if required, People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said Sunday. China's inflation is declining, he said at an annual conference in Boao, on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. "We need to be vigilant to see if the disinflation trend will continue to reach some sort of deflation or not." Further, he said China has room to act if inflation continues to fall.
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Many technical issues of a deal on Iran's nuclear programme are nearly solved, but political hurdles still stand in the way of a deal, Iranian and Western official sources said Sunday amid ongoing talks in Switzerland. The chief diplomats of China, France, the US and Germany were in Lausanne to work with Iran's Mohammad Javad Zarif on the outlines of a deal that would cut back the Islamic republic's nuclear activities, in return for the lifting of various sanctions. The British and Russian foreign ministers were expected to arrive by the evening, joining the effort to reach agreement by their self-imposed deadline on Tuesday.
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France's centre-right Union for a Popular Movement party was the big winner Sunday as a second round of voting in local elections ended amid low turnout. The UMP, which is headed by former president Nicolas Sarkozy, won in 64 of the country's 101 departements, while the centre-left Socialists won just 30, the Interior Ministry said. Sarkozy called the results a win for his side. Most observers have said the elections would serve as an early indication as to how voters felt about the current government of the centre-left Socialists, headed by Francois Hollande.
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