Carillion collapses, Rolls-Royce's L'Orange on the block
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to fall between 2-3 points on Monday.
Stocks to watch
Plumbing and heating company Ferguson said recent US tax cuts would provide an beneficial impact on the group's after tax earnings. The company said it expected an effective tax rate of around 25% for the current year to 31 July 2018, from previous guidance of 28%.
Construction group Carillion will be put into liquidation after crisis talks with the government and creditors collapsed early on Monday. While the government will provide funding to maintain public services run by Carillion, it would not offer the level of support the company needed to stay afloat.
Rolls-Royce has confirmed that it is mulling a potential sale of its L'Orange fuel-injection business, after reports the engine maker was looking for around $700m (£510m). The FTSE 100 company said on Monday that it was "reviewing its strategic options" for the Stuttgart-based arm, but assured that irrespective of the outcome of the review its plans to maintain close ties to L'Orange, either as an owner or as a key customer.
Newspaper round-up
Ministers are facing questions about why hundreds of millions of pounds of work was awarded to a public contractor even after it issued a string of profit warnings. Last night the fate of the company, an employer of almost 20,000 people in the UK, lay in government hands after lenders indicated they would not rescue it without ministerial help. - The Times
The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) is set to accelerate the race to ensure Britain’s roads are ready for a driverless car revolution by the end of the decade. The Government hopes to begin testing autonomous vehicles on British roads by 2019, before they operate freely from 2021, as part of a multibillion pound plan to build an economy fit for the future. - Telegraph
Retailers suffered in the run-up to Christmas as shoppers steered clear of the high street and margins were squeezed by higher costs, Black Friday discounts and online shopping. Total footfall dropped 3.5pc in December compared with last year, the biggest fall since March 2013, according to figures from the British Retail Consortium and retail analysts Springboard, with high streets and shopping centres the hardest hit. - Telegraph
US close
Wall Street's main market gauges continued to barrel ahead at the end of the week, helped by another drop in the US dollar and despite a mixed reaction to the latest quarterly earnings from the likes of JPMorgan and Wells Fargo.
By the close, the Dow Jones Industrials Average was up by 0.89% or 228.46 points to 25,803.19, alongside an advance of 0.67% or 18.68 points to 2,786.24 on the S&P 500 and a gain of 0.68% or 49.28 points in the Nasdaq Composite to 7,261.06.
Over the week as a whole, the S&P 500 added 1.67%.