Pearson selling online learning operation, Supermarket Income refinances loan

London open

The FTSE 100 was expected to open 16 points higher on Tuesday, having closed up 0.93% on Monday at 7,403.85.

Stocks to watch

Educational publisher Pearson said it was selling its Online Learning Services (POLS) operation to private equity firm Regent for a deferred sum as part of a strategic review of its business. The company on Tuesday said it would receive 27.5% of POLS' positive adjusted core earnings annually for six years from completion, excluding loss-making periods.

Grocery property investor Supermarket Income REIT said it has refinanced its existing loan facilities with Bayerische Landesbank with a new three year £86.9m term loan. The secured, interest-only, loan replaces the three existing tranches with BLB and matures in March 2026.

Newspaper round-up

Derby is to be named the new headquarters of Britain’s rail network by ministers this week, the Guardian understands. The delayed result of the competition to become the official home of Great British Railways is expected as early as Tuesday, with the Midlands city the frontrunner on a shortlist of six including Birmingham, Crewe, Doncaster, Newcastle and York. – Guardian

Magnum has cut the number of ice creams sold in its multipacks despite the price staying the same for shoppers. Unilever, the owner of the brand, has shrunk the size of the packs by a quarter in the latest round of shrinkflation on supermarket shelves.- Telegraph

A US-based developer of small nuclear reactors has signed a deal to sell 24 of its power plants to UK customers, putting pressure on rival makers including Rolls-Royce. Last Energy said the £100m modular units, which are two-thirds the size of a football pitch, can output 20MW of electricity, enough to power 40,000 homes. They will be deployed in 2026 with no government funding required. – Telegraph

Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust has been guilty of governance violations going back months, according to a rebel director at the centre of a board bust-up at the FTSE 100 investment company. Amar Bhide, who has been a main board director since 2020, told The Times there had been “a long series of procedural violations” that were “brushed aside” and that he intended to publish details shortly. – The Times

Drax, the owner of Britain’s biggest power station, has warned that the plant could become unviable when its subsidies run out in 2027, threatening Britain’s energy security. The FTSE 250 group said that the future of the biomass-fuelled power plant in North Yorkshire from which it took its name, which can supply four million homes, was in doubt unless it was swiftly offered new subsidies to support the development of a £2 billion carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility at the site. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks closed higher on Monday as the current state of the global banking system remained firmly in focus.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.20% at 32,244.58, while the S&P 500 advanced 0.89% to 3,951.57 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.39% lower at 11,675.54.

The Dow closed 382.60 points higher on Monday, reversing losses recorded in the previous session as the banking sector weighed on major indices.

Banks continued to drive markets on Monday after the Swiss government engineered a forced CHF 3.0bn (£2.64bn) takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS, yet another attempt by policymakers to stop a crisis threatening the banking sector.

Regional banks were still drawing an amount of investor attention amid calls to shore up their deposit bases following the shuttering of Silicon Valley Bank earlier in March, with analysts expecting that more actions will likely be needed if the Federal Reserve can restore confidence in the banking system after it backstopped SVB's uninsured deposits and offered new funding for troubled banks.