CFD Traders Diary
Corus goes to Tata for a big premium
31/1/2007
It
has been another quiet session for the FTSE 100 index despite some good M&A
news, although the batch of corporate reports produced a rather mixed bag on
first observation. Today’s big story concerned Corus, which shot up another
6.8% after Tata of India clinched a takeover of the group with a bid of 608p a
share, which just beat the 603p share offered by Brazil’s CSN.
Vodafone’s figures were reasonably well
received, as it said it had added 8.7m new users in the period to
end-December, taking its total to 198.6m. Vodafone said its customer base had gone above
200m by the end of January, and mobile revenues rose 6.1% during the
quarter. BSkyB met forecasts with a 10% rise in first-half revenues to
£2.2bn, but pre-tax profit fell to £356m from £390m after £84m of losses at its
start up broadband venture. Friends Provident also dropped back
after it announced a Q4 business update with total life and pension new
business for 2006 up 31% to £7.07bn compared with £5.39bn last time, while the
fourth quarter saw an 18% year-on-year rise to £2.44bn. Smiths Industries said its trading is on track
with medical and specialty engineering performing slightly ahead of
expectations.
There
were two main fallers on the second line, with F&C Asset Management down
16% after it lost £26.9bn of assets under management, a quarter of which was
institutional, in the year to December due to further institutional withdrawals
primarily by Dutch investors cancelling balanced mandates to fund specialist
mandates.
Wolfson Microelectronics
dropped 12% as it reported Q4 revenue fell 9% and said seasonality would hit
the first quarter. Last year’s equivalent
figure had seen the company benefit from several major product launches by
leading consumer electronic brands.
