Strong US growth pushes Ferguson towards full year, another Provident unit under FCA scrutiny
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open flat on Tuesday, having closed up 0.53% at 7,338.97 on Monday.
Stocks to watch
Ferguson said it was on track to meet annual profit expectations after strong growth in the US offset tough trading in the UK during the first quarter. The world's biggest distributor of plumbing and heating products reported a 10% rise in revenue from continuing operations in the three months to the end of October.
Provident Financial's Moneybarn motor finance arm is being investigated by the financial watchdog, the second of the embattled subprime lender's businesses to be probed. The Financial Conduct Authority has begun to probe the processes the business applies to check customer affordability before its provides vehicle finance and the treatment of customers in financial difficulties.
Telecommunications giant Vodafone has entered into a strategic alliance with SoftBank Corp, it announced on Tuesday, focussing on mobile services for enterprise customers. The FTSE 100 company said the alliance would enhance commercial and operational support for Vodafone's multinational enterprise customers operating in Japan.
Newspaper round-up
More than one in six people working on housebuilding sites across Britain come from other EU countries, rising to half of site workers in London, according to a new report. A survey of 37,000 housebuilding workers across Britain shows 17.7% are from the EU. More than half of those come from Romania, with 12% from Poland and almost 10% from Ireland. – Guardian
Companies would not be forced to appoint workers to their boards and instead be allowed to choose how they intend to heed the views of employees, according to proposals to overhaul boardroom rules. The proposals, to be published on Tuesday, appear to confirm that Theresa May’s pledge to put workers on boards – made during her campaign last year to become Conservative party leader – has been abandoned. – Guardian
Hedge fund billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn is showing no signs of dialing back on his campaign to oust the London Stock Exchange's chairman, ignoring the board's plea for him to back down by issuing a scathing dossier. The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI), which is run by Sir Christopher and owns 5pc of the exchange, has drawn up a 14-page document outlining why chairman Donald Brydon should go, ahead of a crucial shareholder vote on the matter. – Telegraph
The pound’s Brexit-induced weakness has helped London attract more visitors than any other European destination this year, despite a spate of terror attacks in the capital. The number of European visitors to London rose by 24pc this year, according to data from online travel agent eDreams, helping the city become the most visited destination in Europe. – Telegraph
The Financial Conduct Authority decided not to publish a highly critical investigation into Royal Bank of Scotland’s systematic mishandling of thousands of small and medium-sized companies because it feared being sued for “unfair treatment” by the bank. Despite acknowledging the public interest in issuing its full investigation into the bank’s Global Restructuring Group, the FCA concluded that to do so would expose it to an “unacceptable risk of successful legal action by current/former RBS managers”, internal board minutes seen by The Times show. – The Times
US close
Wall Street finished mixed at the end of the first session of the week, as investors welcomed news that Senate Republicans passed their proposed tax reform bill, although political concerns were still on some traders' minds.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished ahead 0.24% at 24,290.05, while the S&P 500 lost 0.11% to 2,639.44 and the Nasdaq 100 was off 1.17% at 6,263.70.
At the weekend, the US Senate voted 51 to 49 to pass a bill that will implement a slew of changes to the US tax code which will include a big cut in corporation tax.
Analysts at Rabobank and Berenberg believed the lion's share of the boost to US GDP growth would arrive in 2018 and 2019, with the latter now predicting four interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve in 2018 on the back of the proposed legislative changes.
According to Berenberg's chief US economist, Mickey D.Levy, the proposed tax cuts would stoke an acceleration in the rate of business fixed investment to an annualised pace of roughly 6.6% over 2018-2019, from the average 3% clip it had sustained over the past five years.