LondonMetric sells two long income assets, GSK gets US approval for 'Jemperli'

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 30 points lower on Friday, having closed up 0.62% on Thursday at 6,938.24.

Stocks to watch

LondonMetric Property has sold two long income assets let to Marks & Spencer and Wickes in Derby for a combined £11.1m to unnamed buyers. The sale represents a blended net initial yield of 6% and a 7% surplus to the last reported book value. One property is a M&S Foodhall, sold by way of a forward commitment to an overseas private investor for £6.2m and the other a Wickes store, sold to an overseas property company for £4.9m.

GlaxoSmithKline said the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved ‘Jemperli’, or dostarlimab-gxly, based on its Biologics License Application. The FTSE 100 firm said dostarlimab, a programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1) blocking antibody, is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with mismatch repair-deficient recurrent or advanced endometrial cancer, as determined by an FDA-approved test, that have progressed on or following prior treatment with a platinum-containing regimen. It said the indication was given accelerated approval based on tumour response rate and durability of response.

Newspaper round-up

Jaguar Land Rover has suspended production at two of its three car manufacturing sites as a worldwide shortage of computer chips forces the global automotive industry to slam on the brakes. Thousands of workers at the Halewood plant on Merseyside and the main Jaguar factory at Castle Bromwich in the West Midlands are to be stood down from Monday for an unknown amount of time. - The Times

David Cameron repeatedly pushed the Bank of England and the Treasury to risk up to £20bn in taxpayer cash to help Greensill Capital, just as the lender started to face “significant” financial pressure at the start of the pandemic. The UK’s central bank was urged to provide support to Greensill, including by setting up a fund that would buy loans made by the financial services company and its competitors, in a string of emails to senior officials. - Guardian

A cutting-edge microchip technology developer which aims to transform computing has picked London for a $4.5bn (£3.25bn) float that would make multimillionaires of dozens of its staff. Alphawave IP is planning to raise $500m from investors in one of the City’s biggest listings this year. Its team of 75 staff, including its three co-founders, will retain majority ownership of the company after it goes public. Their overall stakes are in line to be valued around $2.25bn. - Telegraph

Shareholders in Foxtons gave the London estate agent a bloody nose yesterday over its decision to award its chief executive almost £1 million in bonuses despite taking almost £7 million in government support. More than 39 per cent of investors who voted at its annual general meeting opposed its remuneration report, which awarded Nic Budden total pay of £1.6 million. Foxtons said it was “clear that a significant proportion of shareholders did not agree . . . on the basis that the company had benefited from government support”. - The Times

Dozens of former subpostmasters who were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting because of the Post Office’s defective Horizon accounting system are expected to finally have their names cleared. Subpostmasters’ lives were “irreparably ruined”, as they lost their jobs, homes and marriages after they were prosecuted by the Post Office – which knew the Fujitsu-developed IT system had “faults and bugs from the earliest days of its operation”, the court of appeal heard last month. - Guardian

US close

Wall Street stocks closed in negative territory on Thursday, despite a better-than-expected jobless claims report.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.94% at 33,815.90, as the S&P 500 lost 0.92% to 4,134.98 and the Nasdaq Composite was off 0.94% at 13,818.41.

The Dow closed 321.41 points lower on Thursday, cutting into gains recorded in the previous session after reopening stocks led all three major indices higher.

On the data front, US jobless claims continued to slip lower, contrary to economists' expectations, hitting a pandemic-era low.

According to the Department of Labor, initial unemployment claims for the week ending on 17 April dropped by 39,000 to reach 547,000.