Barratt order book 'strong', Lloyds Bank CEO to leave in a year
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 97 points higher on Monday, having closed down 1.33% at 6,157.30 on Friday.
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Housebuilder Barratt said its current forward order book was strong with sales ahead of the same time last year as it emerged from the coronavirus lockdown that closed all its sites. The company said it had an order book of 14,326 homes at a value of £3.25bn at the end of June, compared with 11,419 homes a year ago worth £2.6bn. Barratt added that cash at year end was £305m, down from £765.7m, equivalent to around 25% of the owned land bank. It was also paying back money from the government’s employee furlough scheme.
Lloyds Banking Group said Chief Executive Antonio Horta-Osorio planned to leave the bank in a year’s time as it announced that Robin Budenberg would take over as chairman in early 2021.
Payment technology company Network International said on Monday that it was expecting first half total revenue of between c$133m (£106.42m) and $134m, representing “broadly flat” year-on-year performance in the first quarter and a fall of 23% in the second. The FTSE 250 firm said its merchant solutions division showed “gradual recovery” through June, with issuer solutions performance “relatively more resilient”. For the 2020 financial year, it said it now expected a total revenue decline of between 17% and 20%.
Newspaper round-up
UK banks are preparing a code of conduct for pursuing businesses that default on taxpayer-backed coronavirus loans, amid industry estimates that up to eight out of 10 borrowers could fail to repay in full. The Guardian understands that the industry lobby group UK Finance and the state-owned British Business Bank have kicked off talks with commercial lenders in an effort to set industry-wide debt collection standards well ahead of repayments falling due. – Guardian
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is coming under growing pressure to unleash more financial support to stop Britain plunging into the worst jobs crisis for a generation, as figures showed high streets remained quiet on Saturday despite the easing of lockdown measures in some parts of the country. Although pubs, restaurants and hairdressers were allowed to open across England for the first time since March, industry data show that visits to town and city centres on Saturday were down by more than half compared with a year ago. In central London, footfall was 75% lower than in 2019. – Guardian
Banks have netted a $13.2bn (£11bn) windfall in deal fees in Europe so far this year as the plunge in takeovers is offset by companies and countries borrowing trillions of pounds to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The scramble to raise cash means bankers are enjoying higher investment banking fees than they did a year ago despite there being a dearth of lucrative merger deals. – Telegraph
Employers planning mass redundancies of furloughed workers face restrictions that may force them to pay back months of wages to the taxpayer. The Treasury has panicked some businesses by rewording the purpose of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to say it is “integral” that its money is “used by the employer to continue the employment of employees”. – Telegraph
Royal Dutch Shell has hinted that it may move its headquarters from the Netherlands to the UK as it tries to simplify its complex capital structure. Ben van Beurden, the oil company’s chief executive, pointedly declined to rule out the plan in an interview at the weekend. – The Times
US close
Stocks on Wall Street marched higher once more on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average ending the session up 0.36% at 25,827.36.
At the same time, the S&P 500 was ahead 0.45% at 3,130.01, and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.52% to 10,207.63.