AZN's breast cancer drug receives EU marketing approval, PZ Cussons FY revenues grow

London pre-open

The FTSE 100 was being called to open 27.3 points higher ahead of the bell on Monday after closing a solid 2.68% higher on Friday at 7,208.81.

Stocks to watch

Drugmaker AstraZeneca said on Monday that Lynparza, its HER2-negative high-risk early breast cancer drug, has been recommended for marketing authorisation in the European Union after demonstrating "a statistically significant and clinically meaningful" improvement in invasive disease-free survival.

AstraZeneca stated the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency made the recommendation based on positive results in the OlympiA Phase III trial on Lynparza, originally published in the New England Journal of Medicine in June 2021.

UK consumer goods and healthcare company PZ Cussons expects full-year group revenue to be around £590.0m, with like-for-like growth of 3%.

The maker of Imperial Leather soap maintained full-year profits guidance on Monday and said annual growth was driven by an improvement in its price/mix ratio.

Newspaper round-up

The Queen's bank, Coutts & Co, and the Coal Pensions Board have joined a group of investors backing a resolution calling for Sainsbury's to pay the independently set living wage for all staff and contracted workers. The vote at the UK's second-largest supermarket's annual shareholder meeting on 7 July will be the first on a resolution committing a UK company board to pay the living wage. ShareAction, the responsible investment campaign group, said the resolution would be a "litmus test for investors' social commitments amid the cost-of-living crisis". - Guardian

Britain's army of more than a million small and medium-sized businesses are stockpiling raw materials and ordering components six months ahead to overcome supply shortages that prevent them from meeting customer demands. With construction costs reaching fresh record highs and import prices surging following a fall in the pound, businesses reported that much of their cash was tied up in securing the basic raw materials and components needed to supply customers. - Guardian

The world is on the "tipping point" of falling into a period of runaway inflation in which soaring prices become embedded and difficult to control, the Bank for International Settlements has warned. In its annual economic report, the BIS said leading economies faced entering a world in which soaring prices become embedded and difficult to control. - Telegraph

Britain's biggest microchip factory is likely to be closed and production shifted to Shanghai if ministers allow a Chinese takeover of the business to go ahead, a report has warned. Researchers at the Policy Exchange think tank claimed there was a "strong possibility" that Newport Wafer Fab's new owner, Nexperia, will in future seek to move the company's facilities out of South Wales. - Telegraph

By the time the City regulator introduced new rules for the once-promising peer-to-peer lending sector in late 2019, the game was all but up. Platforms with a quarter of a billion pounds in active loans collapsed in chaotic fashion, while many remaining players were in the process of leaving the market or were soon to do so. - The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks wrapped up a rare week of gains in style on Friday but were still firmly on track for the worst first half for major indices in decades.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.68% at 31,500.68, while the S&P 500 was 3.06% firmer at 3,911.74 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 3.34% stronger at 11,607.62.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com