The Morning Call - 21st Century Fox proposes Sky News sale

Highlights of the Day

Asian Markets

Asian markets fell after a tough day on Wall Street but but declines were minimal compared to the United States, thanks in part to a dearth of big technology names that trade in the region.

U.S. Markets

U.S. stocks fell sharply, in the latest example of heavy intraday volatility driven by both uncertainty surrounding trade policy and weakness in the large-capitalization technology and internet sectors.

Today's News

The White House has criticised China after it imposed retaliatory tariffs against the US on a range of goods, including pork and wine. Beijing has introduced duties of up to 25% on 128 American imports following President Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on steel and aluminium. China said the move was intended to safeguard its interests and balance losses caused by the new tariffs.

AstraZeneca’s global biologics research arm MedImmune announced Tuesday that the US Food and Drug Administration has accepted the Biologics License Application for moxetumomab pasudotox, a potential new medicine for the treatment of adult patients with hairy cell leukaemia. ‘The FDA has granted the moxetumomab pasudotox BLA Priority Review status with a Prescription Drug User Fee Act date set for the third quarter of 2018,’ the firm said.

Moneysupermarket has agreed to acquire Decision Technologies, a home communications and mobile phone comparison business, for £40m. Decision Tech provides home communications comparison both as a B2B service and via its own consumer comparison brands such as broadbandchoices.co.uk.

Vodafone said its Indian unit had completed the sale of its standalone tower business to ATC Telecom Infrastructure Private for an enterprise value of around €478m. Vodafone India and Idea both announced their intention to sell their respective tower businesses as part of their merger announcement last month.

Anglo American said it has suspended operations at its Minas-Rio iron ore operations in Brazil in order to inspect its slurry pipeline. The mining giant said the suspension took effect on Thursday in order to conduct a “full inspection” of the pipeline which carries iron ore in slurry form from the mine to the export terminal. This followed what it called a “minor leak”, which was identified on Thursday evening.

Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox has said it would sell off Sky News to Disney or ring-fence it to try to allay regulatory concerns over its proposed acquisition of Sky. Fox wants to buy the 61% of Sky it does not already own. But it faces regulatory problems after the Competition and Markets Authority found the £11.7bn deal was not in the public interest.

Petrofac has been awarded a lump-sum engineering, procurement and construction contract by Vedanta Limited valued at around $233m. The 23-month contract is for Vedanta’s Raageshwari deep gas field development project in Rajasthan, India, and the scope of work includes well pads, flow lines and a new gas processing terminal.

Gold Prices eased after gaining more than 1 percent in the previous session, even as a sell-off in global equities amid concerns over a trade war between China and the United States continued to support the safe-haven metal.

Oil Prices inched up as rising Russian output and expectations of a reduction in Saudi Arabian crude prices were offset by a potential slowdown in U.S. production.

Companies Reporting this week

Day	Companies
Monday:	None of Note
Tuesday:	None of Note
Wednesday:	None of Note
Thursday:	None of Note
Friday:	None of Note

Early Market Movements

Market	Index	Change	% Change
UK 100	7,012.1	-44.5	-0.6%
UK 250	19,362.5	-98.0	-0.5%
GER 30	12,003.4	-93.3	-0.8%
FRA 40	5,143.0	-24.4	-0.5%
U.S. 30	23,644.19	-458.92	-1.9%
U.S. 500	2,581.9	-59.0	-2.2%
OIL (BRENT)	67.90	+0.26	+0.4%
GOLD	1,340.76	-0.53	-0.0%

UK Risers & Fallers (8:15am)

Company	Price	Change	% Change
Micro Focus	999.4	+12.6	+1.3%
Randgold Resources	5948	+66	+1.1%
Allied Mind	107.6	+2.6	+2.5%
Scottish Mortgage	432	-10.2	-2.3%
Hargreaves Lansdown	1599	-34	-2.1%
Capita Group	139.4	-4.65	-3.2%

Latest Broker Views

Company	Broker	Recommendation	Price	Target
Burberry	Credit Suisse	Outperform	1697.5	1850
Kingfisher	Credit Suisse	Outperform	290.5	385
Smiths Group	Barclays	Overweight	1512	1780
Morrison (W.M.)	Bernstein	Outperform	208.5	245