Standard Life Aberdeen books £40m impairment, RELX lifts dividend by 10pc

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 58 points higher on Thursday, having closed up 0.64% at 7,213.97 on Wednesday.

Stocks to watch

Standard Life Aberdeen said it was making an impairment charge of around £40m after Lloyds Bank announced it was withdrawing funds controlled by its Scottish Widows investment arm. Keith Skeoch and Martin Gilbert, Standard Life Aberdeen's Chief Executives said: "We are disappointed by this decision in the context of the strong performance and good service we have delivered for LBG, Scottish Widows and their customers. We will be discussing the implications of this with LBG and Scottish Widows."

RELX Group, the information and analytics formerly known as Reed Elsevier, lifted its final dividend 10%, pledged to repeat its £700m share buyback in 2018 and proposed a to merge its UK and Dutch parent companies in a further simplification of its corporate structure. The group will remain in the FTSE 100 and will apply for its Plc shares to be listed on Euronext Amsterdam after the merger, which will see no changes to its current headquarters, office locations, staffing levels or dividends in what is a cost- and profit-neutral merger.

AstraZeneca, along with Merck & Co, announced on Thursday that the US Food and Drug Administration has granted Orphan Drug Designation (ODD) for selumetinib, a MEK 1/2 inhibitor, for the treatment of neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1). The FTSE 100 drugmaker described NF1 as an incurable genetic condition, which affects one in 3,000 births with highly-variable symptoms, including cutaneous, neurological and orthopaedic manifestations.

Newspaper round-up

Britain is set for a pay rise as the world economy lifts growth and falling migration makes it harder for companies to find cheap foreign labour. A report by the regional agents of the Bank of England suggests firms expect to give the average worker a 3.1 per cent pay rise in 2018, compared to 2.6 per cent last year, amid the strongest growth for a decade. - Daily Mail

Sterling will plunge more than 15 per cent from current levels if Britain leaves the European Union in a disorderly fashion, the IMF has warned. In its annual Article IV assessment of the UK economy, the Bretton Woods institution said the pound was up to 15 per cent overvalued on fundamentals today but “should Brexit lead to a significant increase in trade barriers, the equilibrium exchange rate could be more depreciated than suggested here”. - The Times

British businesses want to stay in the customs union and the single market after Brexit, according to a Harvard survey conducted by Ed Balls. The former shadow chancellor interviewed 80 small and medium-sized businesses in Britain about the type of deal they wanted and has published the findings in a report from the Harvard Kennedy School. - The Times

The Goldman Sachs boss, Lloyd Blankfein, has added his voice to the chorus warning that Donald Trump’s $1.5tn tax cut and spending plans could lead to an overheated US economy. “The odds of a bad outcome have gone up,” Blankfein said, warning that over-stimulating an already healthy economy could prove “too much of a good thing”. - Guardian

The Murdoch clan are under mounting pressure to increase their takeover bid for Sky in the wake of the pay-TV giant’s successful Premier League rights auction. Sky retained its status as the dominant Premier League broadcaster and slashed its annual bill by nearly £200m, prompting renewed calls for a more generous offer from 21st Century Fox.

US close

Markets recorded another positive session on Wall Street on Wednesday, although there was some volatility after the release of the latest inflation figures.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished ahead 1.03% at 24,893.49, the S&P 500 rose 1.34% at 2,698.63, and the Nasdaq 100 was up 1.85% at 6,675.03.

Wednesday's hotly-awaited CPI report revealed that the cost of living in the US held steady last month, buoyed by unusually large increases in clothing and medical care prices, with the former rising at their quickest pace since 1990.

Consumer prices edged past economists' forecasts, despite much ballyhooed revisions to the government's seasonal adjustment factors which had been expected to contribute to a small decline in the rate of advance in prices.

The rate of gains in headline consumer prices was at 2.1% year-on-year in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, against consensus forecasts for 2.0% - unchanged from the month before.

At the 'core' level, CPI came in at 1.8% against consensus expectations for 1.7%, which was also the same as in the month before.