Member Info for MY21

George Osborne told he must use Budget to boost North Sea exploration: George Osborne must do more to boost exploration activity in the North Sea in this week’s Budget to help boost ailing confidence in the oil and gas sector, Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce has said.

Marks & Spencer ‘suffers clothing setback’: Marks and Spencer is expected to have suffered another blow in its attempts to get its clothing business back on track, after cool weather in May and June dampened sales.

Rip-off rents hit the Home Counties as unaffordability contagion spreads out of London: The cost of renting in the Home Counties has risen 5.4% over the last six months to June, driven up by international tenants and a surge in demand from companies relocating employees and their families to the London commuter belt

Ashtead: sharpest tool in the box: Two of them, HSS Hire and Speedy Hire, issued profit warnings this week, and Speedy parted company with its Chief Executive too. Their fortunes contrast sharply with those of Ashtead. Its results for the year to April 30 beat forecasts and the company raised its final dividend by a third. Most of all though, it is the economic cycle, which picked up earlier in the U.S. than in the U.K. Plant hire entails borrowing money to buy equipment, keeping it heavily utilised and reinvesting the cash flow in more kit. The business model works like a dream when construction is buoyant — which is why Ashtead’s shares have risen 1,000% over the past five years. Over-investing at the wrong point in the cycle can be calamitous. Ashtead knows that feeling — having scrambled to deleverage seven years ago — and although capital expenditure is still over £1 billion each year, it intends to keep net debt at less than twice earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation. That compares to over three times ebitda in 2007.

Rural pensioners keep young families off housing ladder: The shortage of affordable homes in many of England’s rural areas is pricing out young families and will lead to dozens of “pensioner pockets” in the countryside, an analysis shows.

UK official reserves recorded a rise in June Official reserves recorded a rise of $1.00 million in the UK, in June. In the prior month, official reserves had dropped $324.00 million.

At 0330GMT today, Brent crude oil one month futures contract is trading 0.93% or $0.56 lower at $59.76 per barrel. On Friday, the contract declined 2.82% or $1.75, to settle at $60.32 per barrel, pressured by the increase in US rigs drilling for oil. Moreover, a possible deal between Iran and the West that could boost oil supply in the world market continued to weigh on the commodity.

Bidders stalk the U.K.’s top landlord Grainger in ‘£1 billion takeover’ after investment group Crystal Amber takes 3% stake: Grainger, Britain’s largest market-listed landlord, is being circled by potential bidders considering a £1 billion-plus takeover

AstraZeneca 12-month low is a buying opportunity: When it comes to discovering drugs to treat the many different forms of cancer, AstraZeneca is one of the world’s leaders. The FTSE 100-listed company has developed breakthrough immuno-oncology treatments that use the body’s own immune system to recognise and destroy cancer cells. This technology is being combined with a greater understanding of the human genetic code to identify people who will respond better to certain types of treatment. Big pharmaceutical groups such as AstraZeneca are still suffering from patents running out on blockbuster drugs, and cheaper, rival copies are being made. The so-called “patent cliff” damages sales and lowers the profits on drugs. The biggest for AstraZeneca has been around its blockbuster cholesterol treatment, Crestor, which generates about a fifth of sales for the company. The good news is that analysts now believe that the worst of the sharp fall in revenues and profits should be coming to an end. The long decline in revenue will reach its nadir in 2016 and analysts from Berenberg believe earnings can grow at 13% a year for the six-year period from 2017 onwards. The profit margin is also expected to reach its lowest point at about 26% in 2016, and then recover steadily to the sector average of about 35% by 2023. Therefore any signs that AstraZeneca is improving its trading and making progress with its cancer drugs will see the shares rise sharply. Those who wait too long will see any gains eroded. Analysts from Berenberg calculate that, once the market wakes up to the value of the new cancer drugs, the shares will be worth £52 each, which means gains of £11 per share. Questor also likes getting paid £1.80 in dividends every year to wait. AstraZeneca at £41.67 Questor Says ‘Buy’.

Shares in Imaginatik soar as Rob Terry increases stake: Controversial businessman Rob Terry has increased his stake in Imaginatik for the third time in two weeks, just as the Aim-listed minnow signed a deal with a U.S. based energy generation company.

Optimal expects green light on Skrill merger by end of July: Optimal Payments, the British online payments group, expects to receive regulatory approval for its €1.1 billion reverse takeover of rival Skrill by the end of this month, paving the way for the creation of a rare large UK technology group on the London Stock Exchange.

Treasury considers big shake-up of UK pension tax: Treasury officials are considering a big shake-up of the tax treatment of pensions, prompting warnings from the UK industry that retirement saving could be put at risk.

London’s luxury homes bubble loses air: House prices in London’s most expensive areas have begun to fall for the first time since the financial crisis, as tax rises curb demand and trigger fears that the capital’s luxury market has peaked.

Strong services growth points to early Bank of England rate rise: A post-election spurt from the U.K.’s army of services firms has raised the chances of a first rise in interest rates since 2007, experts said.

Explorer opens new front on fracking: An exploration company has applied to “frack” for shale gas in Yorkshire just four days after Lancashire county councillors rejected a proposal from a rival developer, Cuadrilla Resources

Oil prices ended lower last week, after the Energy Information Administration reported an unexpected increase in US crude oil stockpiles. Moreover, OPEC’s oil production hit a three-year high in June, while US oil rigs rose for the first time after 29 straight weeks of declines, raising concerns of a large supply surplus into an already oversupplied oil market. Brent crude oil prices rose 4.6% to $60.32/barrel.

Housebuilder Persimmon urges Government to do more to improve planning system: Housebuilder Persimmon said confidence in the housing market has picked up since the General Election – but it urged the Government to do more to improve the planning system.

Persimmon: land bank: Take Persimmon, which issued an upbeat trading statement. Its share price is up 35% this year, against 1% for the FTSE 100 index. Relative to book value, the stock is more expensive now than it was at the height of previous booms. Credit conditions remain supportive; mortgages have never been cheaper and will rise only slowly. The government’s Help to Buy scheme, which backs 40% of Persimmon’s sales, runs until 2020. There is pressure on margins from rising labour and materials costs, but Persimmon’s “value over volume” strategy limits its impact. The outlook for land prices, the company’s other major input cost, is benign. Smaller builders, which account for about a quarter of U.K. output, are still struggling to secure finance, limiting their ability to compete in the land market. That means land is cheaper than might be expected at this stage in the cycle. Data from Savills suggest that consented land outside urban areas is 22% cheaper than it was in 2007; had previous correlations with house prices held true, it would be back at its previous peak by now

BP: settling down: BP has long waited for the legal clouds to clear after the tragic Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico, just over five years ago. On Thursday, the company announced an $18.7 billion settlement with U.S. plaintiffs, to be paid over 18 years. Its shares jumped nearly 5% on the news. For the first time in years shareholders have a sense of the final cost of the disaster, no matter how eye-watering. And the annual payments, discounted to ‘s dollars at a 7% rate, come to less than $11 billion; factor in that two-thirds of the settlement can be taken against taxes and the number falls to the range of $9 billion. The jump in BP’s market value on Thursday was almost half that. Other oil companies have growth aspirations, too. BP has been seen as a possible takeover candidate in the past. Potential buyers include ExxonMobil of the U.S. This settlement, which covers almost all the Deepwater Horizon claims, will help to firm up a price for BP as a target. The settlement explicitly provides for an accelerated payment schedule in the event of a change of control. Shareholders might not mind a bid. BP’s shares have performed poorly since the accident. They have trailed the MSCI World Energy index — hardly a star investment itself — by more than 30 percentage points since April 2010. With an enterprise value of 5.2 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (plus exploration charges), BP’s shares trade at a slight discount to its global rivals.

Fosun bets on European property with Resolution venture: Fosun, the private conglomerate run by the man dubbed “China’s Warren Buffett”, has taken a big step into the European real estate market by signing a joint venture deal with U.K.-based asset Manager Resolution Property.