Capita unveils £701m rights issue, Workspace acquires two more Centro buildings
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 12 points higher on Monday, having closed up 0.54% at 7,368.17 on Friday.
Stocks to watch
Capita has unveiled plans for a £701m rights issue to enable it to carry out a new strategy as it reported "significant deterioration" in winning new business and a £513m loss before tax. The main dent to profits came from a £551.6m write-down as the FTSE 250 outsourcing company wrote down the value of goodwill in its business in the face of "continued operational and external challenges" that have led to the sharp decline in new business opportunities from earlier positions, on top of contract terminations and "volume attrition", particularly in the Private Sector Partnerships division.
United Arab Emirates private healthcare operator NMC Health launched an offering of senior, unsecured, guaranteed convertible bonds due 2025 on Monday, with a principal amount of $450m, convertible into ordinary shares of the company. The FTSE 100 firm said the bonds would be marketed with a fixed coupon of 1.875%, payable semi-annually in arrears and an expected initial exchange price at a premium of between 50% and 60% to the reference share price, being the volume-weighted average price of a share on the London Stock Exchange between launch and pricing, converted to USD at the prevailing spot rate at the time of pricing.
Workspace has announced that it has acquired two further Centro buildings for £76.5m in cash. Following the company's acquisition of five Centro buildings back in January, it has now bought another two freehold building in Camden providing 85,000 square feet of warehouse-style offices, with a communal roof terrace, reception area and a gym.
Newspaper round-up
Theresa May could face a cabinet revolt on a customs union as peers prepare to inflict more defeats on the government over the EU withdrawal bill in a key week for the future of the UK’s relations with Europe. Amid Brexiter threats of a leadership challenge, the former cabinet minister Nicky Morgan, who chairs the Treasury committee, said party rebels should be careful what they wished for. – Guardian
The Bank of England is “dangerously ill-equipped” to avert the next recession and remains mired fighting the last downturn, according to a report calling for the introduction of radical new policy tools. According to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), the odds of a recession once every 10 to 15 years mean Threadneedle Street needs additional firepower for when the economy next begins to falter. – Guardian
The UK has already suffered stealth cyber attacks on more than 80 manufacturing plants, with criminals deploying tactics that could put critical national infrastructure at risk. Britain’s spy agencies have warned the bosses of utilities, transport and health services that Russian hackers are invading unprotected networks ahead of a potentially serious attack. – Telegraph
Top luxury brands including Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabbana and Chanel are among the least transparent businesses when it comes to labour conditions in their supply chains, according to research released five years after the Rana Plaza disaster, the sector’s deadliest industrial accident on record. Dior discloses virtually nothing about where its clothes are made, according to this year’s Fashion Transparency Index, while D&G, Chanel, Marc Jacobs, Versace and Giorgio Armani all scored less than 10pc of the total available points. – Telegraph
China said that it welcomed plans by Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury secretary, to visit Beijing to defuse tensions between the world’s two largest economies and stave off a full-blown trade war. China’s commerce ministry said yesterday that it had received a message about American interest in visiting Beijing for talks on trade and economic affairs. “The Chinese side welcomes this,” it said. – The Times
The effectiveness of the government’s small business commissioner — appointed to tackle chronic problems of late payment to small suppliers — has been called into question after officials admitted that he is presently considering only two such cases. The commissioner must produce “concrete results sooner rather than later”, the Federation of Small Businesses warned. – The Times
US close
Wall Street’s main indices all finished lower on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 0.82% to 24,462.94, the S&P 500 off 0.85% at 2,670.14, and the Nasdaq 100 falling 1.58% to 6,667.75.