GSK cancer treatment granted full FDA approval, FirstGroup scores two-year SWR extension

London pre-open

The FTSE was being called to open 28.5 points lower ahead of the bell on Friday after wrapping up the prior session 0.33% higher at 7,911.15.

Stocks to watch

Drugmaker GSK's mismatch repair-deficient recurrent or advanced endometrial cancer treatment has been granted full approval by the US Food and Drug Administration.

GSK said Jemperli's approval comes hot on the heels of long-term outcome results from its GARNET phase I trial, which demonstrated an overall response rate of 45.4%.

FirstGroup said on Friday that it had been granted a two-year extension for its South Western Railway franchise, by the UK government.

The contract, which began in May 2021, will now run until May 25 2025 on existing terms, the company said on Friday.

Newspaper round-up

Media conglomerate News Corp said on Thursday that it would cut 1,250 jobs after it missed estimates for second-quarter earnings due to weakness in its news and digital real estate businesses. Rising inflation and higher interest rates are forcing companies to curb their ad and marketing spend, denting one of the major sources of revenue for companies such as News Corp, which has major publishing platforms including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post in the US, the Sun and the Times in the UK, and the Australian. – Guardian

British companies have been banned from paying ransomware hackers after a spate of attacks on businesses including Royal Mail and the Guardian newspaper. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly on Thursday unveiled sanctions on seven Russian hackers linked to a gang called Conti, effectively banning any payments to the group. – Telegraph

Shell investors are backing legal action against the company's directors, claiming they are failing to do enough to tackle climate change. Nest, the UK pension fund, and Danske Bank Asset Management, the Danish asset manager, are among those supporting a case brought by ClientEarth, an environmental charity that owns a small number of Shell shares. – Telegraph

A judge in New York yesterday extended a ban on the ability of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, to contact employees of companies he once controlled and to use encrypted messaging technology while out on bail awaiting trial on fraud charges. This month District Judge Lewis Kaplan temporarily barred Bankman-Fried from contacting any present or former employees of FTX or Alameda Research, his hedge fund, after prosecutors raised concerns that the 30-year-old former billionaire may be trying to tamper with witnesses. As a condition of his release on a $250.0m bond, the judge also prevented Bankman-Fried from using messaging apps such as Signal that allow users to auto-delete messages. – The Times

One of Britain's biggest investment platforms has added its voice to a campaign to scrap stamp duty on investment trust share purchases after calculating that its clients alone had paid £30.0m in the tax over the past three years. Interactive Investor, which has about 400,000 clients, called the levy on investment trusts "anti-competitive and unfair" and it wants Jeremy Hunt to change the rules in the budget next month. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks were firmly in the red at the close of trading on Thursday, extending heavy losses recorded in the previous session.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.73% at 33,699.88, while the S&P 500 lost 0.88% to 4,081.50 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 1.02% weaker at 11,789.58.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com