Hammerson offloads stake in Strasbourg Place des Halles, United Utilities profit ahead in first half

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open three points lower on Wednesday, having closed up 0.3% at 7,411.34 on Tuesday.

Stocks to watch

Hammerson has sold its 64.5% share of the Place des Halles shopping centre in Strasbourg, France for a total net vendor price of £258m, slightly above June's book value. Contracts have been exchanged with LaSalle Investment Management, the co-owner of the centre, and the sale is expected to occur before year end.

United Utilities profit rose 10% in the first half as the water and waste management company increased revenue and cut costs. Underlying operating profit for the six months to the end of September increased to £344m from £312.5m a year earlier. Revenue rose by £23m to £876m and total costs fell by £16m.

GlaxoSmithKline said ViiV Healthcare, the global specialist HIV company which it majority owns, with Pfizer and Shionogi as shareholders, has announced that the US Food and Drug Administration has approved Juluca. The FTSE 100 firm said it was indicated as a “complete regimen” for the maintenance treatment of HIV-1 infection in adults who are virologically suppressed on a stable antiretroviral regimen for at least six months with no history of treatment failure and no known substitutions associated with resistance to the individual components of Juluca.

Business information and events group Euromoney Institutional Investor has reached a binding agreement to sell its minority equity stake in Dealogic, a provider of content and software solutions to financial firms, to Ion Investment Group for approximately $135m, it announced on Wednesday. The FTSE 250 company said consideration will be received in cash, with completion of the sale subject to regulatory approvals, expected to take approximately six weeks.

Newspaper round-up

Uber concealed a massive global breach of the personal information of 57 million customers and drivers in October 2016, failing to notify the individuals and regulators, the company acknowledged on Tuesday. Uber also confirmed it had paid the hackers responsible $100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach quiet, which was first reported by Bloomberg. – Guardian

MPs have accused the government of failing to protect consumers over the price it has promised to pay for power from the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. The Commons public accounts committee said the subsidy contract for Hinkley Point C, agreed in 2016 after years of delays, would hit poorest households hardest. – Guardian

With the latest technology at their fingertips, modern water companies should be better than ever at finding and fixing leaks. But it turns out many of them are making use of a rather less cutting edge method – magic. Ten out of 12 major water suppliers in the UK admitted to using “dowsing” or “divining rods” to detect underground water, a method which has been widely discredited by modern science. The rods were once believed to twitch in the hands of a “diviner” to point to underground reserves, a method which is believed to date back to the 15th century. – Telegraph

One of the London Stock Exchange's top investors has urged the Governor of the Bank of England to step in and remove the exchange's chairman, in a significant escalation of one of the most bitter City spats in recent memory. Sir Christopher Hohn has written the latest of a series of open letters to Douglas Brydon, the chairman of the LSE, in which he has warned him to not "undertake a character assassination" of the exchange's chief executive Xavier Rolet, arguing this will make it harder to hire future executives. – Telegraph

Auditors who sign off flawed accounts could face fines of more than £10 million after a watchdog said that it would be raising the penalties it could impose on those who breached its professional code of conduct. The Financial Reporting Council said that “seriously poor” audit work by the Big Four accountancy firms would lead to larger financial penalties after a review of its sanctions by Sir Christopher Clarke, a former judge. – The Times

Two North Sea projects were sold yesterday to new-generation explorers. BP, the oil major, sold three fields to Serica Energy for up to £300 million, while Ineos paid a “substantial” sum that could lead to the development of a new gasfield. Ineos is targeting an area 93 miles north of the Shetland Islands, where there is estimated to be up to three trillion cubic feet of gas. – The Times

US close

Markets on Wall Street finished higher on Tuesday amid a 'bullish' call on stocks out of Goldman Sachs, and against a backdrop of supportive economic data.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 0.69% higher at 23,590.83, the S&P 500 pushed ahead 0.65% at 2,599.03, and the Nasdaq 100 was 1.11% firmer at 6,378.63.

In a research note entitled ‘rational exuberance’, strategists at Goldman Sachs earlier projected the S&P 500 would rise to 2,850 points by year-end 2018, if proposed tax reforms were approved.

Should they fail, then the benchmark index would see a 5% drop near-term to 2,450.

Concentrating on the positives, Goldman said an "extended profit cycle will support a rising US equity market through 2020”.

“Higher profits will support higher index levels … our S&P 500 year-end forecasts are 2850 in 2018, 3000 in 2019, and 3100 in 2020 for gains of 11%, 5%, and 3%.”