8.14am: FTSE opens week and month on front foot
The FTSE 100 has started the week and the first business day of the month on the front foot, climbing 27 points initially.
This is thanks to gains for Asia-focused financials Prudential and Standard Chartered, along with oil giants BP and Shell, and precious metals miner Fresnillo.
Brent crude oil prices are up 0.4% at just over £65, while gold and silver are both up around 0.5% at $4023 and $49 an ounce, respectively.
8am: Saatchi says no
M&C Saatchi PLC (AIM:SAA) has rejected a £50 million offer from Bave Bison (AIM:BBSN) for its Singapore-based performance marketing division, known as M+C Saatchi Performance (MCSP).
The Saatchi board was said to be of the view that the offer “fundamentally undervalues the division and does not reflect the future prospects for the division which forms a core element of the company’s growth plans”.
It said no talks have been held since receiving the offer.
Brave Bison said it wanted to combine MCSP with its own existing performance marketing operations to form a “scaled digital media challenger to the global marketing networks”, which it said would be one of the largest such firms outside the US, with a market-leading presence in UK and Asia Pacific.
7.32am: Not much FTSE 350 company news about
It’s pretty quiet on the FTSE 350 corporate news front. Here’s two of the best and you’ll see what I mean.
Intertek Group PLC (LSE:ITRK) has acquired a provider of food safety and medical devices testing services based in Costa Rica.
Suplilab generated revenues of £3.1 million last year and “will enable Intertek to establish a leading position in Costa Rica’s food and medical devices sectors”.
Something we all dream of.
Capita PLC (LSE:CPI), meanwhile, has won a contract extension for its call centre business wit Samsung in the UK, answering calls, emails and social media queries from people who have bought mobile phones, TVs and other products from the Korean colossus.
The outsourcer will “deliver impactful transformation”, it said, including a pilot of its Agent Suite generative AI platform that supports contact centre agents, such as by summarising calls, suggesting responses, or automating routine queries.
Capita, which has worked with Samsung UK since 2011, says the AI-backed approach “aligns with and supports Samsung’s mission to inspire consumers to adopt the company’s innovative technology”.
7.17am: FTSE to start November on front foot
The FTSE 100 is predicted to begin November trading marginally on the front foot, ahead of a busy week of company news, economic data and a knife-edge Bank of England decision.
Futures are calling the London benchmark 12 points higher on Monday, after last week finished with the index ending its winning run after 10 days, closing down 42.44 points on Friday at 9,717.25, but still having gained over 220 points during October.
Wall Street stocks closed the week higher, with the Nasdaq rising 0.6%, the S&P 500 climbing 0.3% and the Dow Jones finishing the day just above flat.
October was the sixth monthly gain for the S&P, a stretch not seen since 2021, according to analysts at Deutsche Bank, who also flagged Japan’s Nikkei having its best month in 35 years and, despite a recent pullback, gold climbing above $4,000 an ounce and silver posting a sixth consecutive monthly gain for the first time in 45 years.
Oil prices are up slightly, after an OPEC meeting at the weekend where it announced a halt in additional supply between January and March, following a 137,000 barrels per day increase in December.
