TRIG acquires Solwaybank wind farm, Virgin Money accepts CYBG offer

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open nine points lower on Monday, having closed down 1.7% at 7,633.91 on Friday.

Stocks to watch

The Renewables Infrastructure Group has acquired an onshore wind farm in the UK, ‘Solwaybank’, in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Solwaybank is in the early stages of construction, and was expected to become operational in the first quarter of 2020. The FTSE 250 firm said once complete, Solwaybank would comprise 15 Senvion MM100 wind turbines, each with a rated capacity of 2.0MW, amounting to 30MW. Total consideration was expected to be around £82m, of which £39m was invested at acquisition.

Virgin Money has accepted a £1.7bn takeover offer from CYBG, the owner of Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank. CYBG will pay 1.2125 of its own new shares for each Virgin Money share, which based on a closing price at the end of last week of 306p values Virgin Money shares at 371p apiece.

One of Britain’s biggest bus companies was looking to embrace and counter the technological revolutions brought by Uber and Amazon, with services to pick up people on demand at so-called “virtual stops”. FTSE 250 company Go-Ahead also had plans to convert its buses and depots to handle online shopping delivery services.

Newspaper round-up

Debit card payments have overtaken cash as the most popular form of payment in the UK for the first time, according to banking industry figures. Consumers used their debit cards 13.2bn times last year, up 14% compared to 2016, according to a report by UK Finance, the trade body for the UK banking and financial services sector. The number of cash transactions fell by 15% to 13.1bn transactions in the same period. – Guardian

Eurozone finance ministers are braced for a row this week with the Greek government over the terms of a “golden goodbye” as the country prepares to exit its third bailout programme. Concerns that Greece will suffer a fourth financial collapse unless an agreement is signed with the EU to write off some of its debt mountain are likely to surface before a showdown in Brussels on Thursday. - Guardian

A British startup has raised $10m in funding to further its mission to clean up the world’s largest businesses poor “cyber hygiene”. Panaseer, which claims to monitor some of the world’s most prominent companies’ technology estates, will use the cash to boost its research and development efforts in the UK while expanding sales and marketing across the US. – Telegraph

Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic worth and are useless as a form of exchange. They entail exorbitant transaction costs. They are very slow. Together they have turned into an ecological nightmare. They are not backed by the assets and revenues stream of an established state. Most can be rendered worthless by fraud or digital manipulation. They are essentially ponzi schemes that masquerade as citizen currencies beyond government control. – Telegraph

Homes for sale in the Midlands and in the north of the UK are being snapped up so quickly that Rightmove says there has been a sharp reduction in the level of stock available on its website. Britain’s biggest property website said the strong levels of buyer activity in the north of England, Scotland and Wales has led to the number of homes on sale in these regions shrinking by an average of 4.3 per cent compared with a year ago. – The Times

US close

Wall Street markets finished their Friday sessions in the red, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 0.34% to 25,090.48, the S&P 500 slipping 0.1% to 2,779.66, and the Nasdaq 100 closing down 0.33% to 7,255.76.