Ocado extends partnership with France's Groupe Casino, Reckitt Benckiser swings to a FY loss
London pre-open
The FTSE 100 was being called to open 12.5 points lower ahead of the bell on Thursday after seeing out the previous session just 0.07% weaker at 7,603.78.
Stocks to watch
UK online grocer Ocado and France's Groupe Casino said on Thursday that they had signed a deal to extend their current partnership and create a new joint venture to support the development and management of single or multi-tenanted distribution centres in France.
“Underpinned by the success of their partnership and expanding operations in Ile-de-France, Ocado and Groupe Casino believe there is significant and growing demand for online grocery services across the French market, creating a huge opportunity to leverage their combined expertise, including Ocado's UK experience providing multi-retailer customer fulfilment centres," the companies said in a joint statement.
Property investment firm CLS Holdings has unconditionally exchanged contracts to acquire a 9,168 square metre office building in Dusseldorf from Alstria Office REIT for €25.0m.
The FTSE 250-listed firm said the acquisition of Kanzlerstraße 8, which has a weighted average unexpired lease term of around eight years, a net initial yield of 5.1% and a reversionary yield of 5.7%, was expected to complete in April 2022.
Reckitt Benckiser suffered an £804.0m annual operating loss as the consumer goods company booked a loss on the sale of its Chinese infant formula business.
The FTSE 100 group swung to the loss in the year ended 31 December from a profit of £2.16bn twelve months earlier. Net revenue fell 5.8% to £3.36bn. Excluding the sale of the IFCN business, operating profit fell 8.5%, or 2.6% at constant currency, to £2.94bn.
Newspaper round-up
The Post Office and the government need to speed up compensation payments to workers who were victims of the Horizon IT scandal, according to a report by an influential group of MPs. MPs from parliament's Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee have expressed concerns about the time taken to make settlements to former Post Office operators who were wrongfully convicted as a result of errors in the company's computer accounting system. - Guardian
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has insisted the bloc can cope if Russia decides to "weaponise" gas supplies amid tensions over Ukraine. Ms Von der Leyen said "a number" of countries were ready to step up shipments of gas to Europe and it was now on the "safe side" for keeping households and businesses supplied this winter. - Telegraph
The owner of Facebook has suffered another setback after Google said it would stop advertisers tracking users across apps on Android phones, following in the footsteps of Apple. Google said it wanted to "raise the bar for user privacy" by changing the way marketers could collect data as people move between apps on phones that use Android, the mobile operating system it owns that works on about two-thirds of mobile devices around the world. - The Times
The $2.6trn cryptomarket is evolving rapidly and could quickly pose a risk to financial stability, global regulators have warned. The Financial Stability Board, which co-ordinates rules for the G20 economies, urged watchdogs around the world to work together to tackle the potential hazards posed by digital assets. - The Times
US close
Wall Street equities put on a mixed performance on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 in the green for a second consecutive session as investors digested minutes from the Federal Reserve's most recent meeting.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.16% at 34,934.27 and the Nasdaq Composite was off 0.11% at 14,124.10, while the S&P 500 managed gains of 0.09% to 4,475.01.