GSK announces £130m investment, Future trading at top end of forecasts

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The FTSE 100 is expected to open flat on Monday, having closed up 0.63% at 6,290.30 on Friday.

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GlaxoSmithKline said it would invest £130m in a collaboration with CureVac to develop and make up to five mRNA-based vaccines and monoclonal antibodies targeting infectious disease pathogens. The deal includes £104m in cash upfront and a one-time reimbursable payment of £26m for manufacturing capacity reservation, upon certification of CureVac's commercial scale manufacturing facility currently under construction in Germany. CureVac will be eligible to receive development and regulatory milestone payments of up to £277m, commercial milestone payments of up to £329m and tiered royalties on product sales, GSK said on Monday.

Specialist publisher Future said on Monday that, with two months of the financial year left, and as a result of the effect of strong digital audience numbers, cost control and the acceleration of synergies following the acquisition of TI Media, trading was expected to be towards the top end of market expectations for the 2020 financial year. The FTSE 250 company added that, due to its continued performance, it was repaying the support it had received from the UK government’s furlough scheme.

Synairgen's Covid-19 treatment sharply reduced the risk of patients developing severe forms of the illness provoked by the novel coronavirus, clinical trials showed. The company said that SNG001, an inhaled formulation of interferon beta-1, reduced the risk of becoming severely ill by 79% and that those administered the treatment were more than twice as likely to recover from Covid-19

Newspaper round-up

The fashion retailer Ted Baker is to axe at least 500 jobs – more than a quarter of its UK workforce – as the pandemic continues to batter the high street. It is understood that about 200 of the roles will go at the retailer’s London headquarters, the Ugly Brown Building, with the remainder from its shops – it has 46 in the UK and Europe – and store concessions. – Guardian

Almost two thirds of companies plan to cut investment spending over the next three years as they look ahead to a slow recovery that will delay almost half from clawing back pre-Covid-19 levels of sales before next summer. A survey of finance directors by the accountants Deloitte found that 65% said a combination of the coronavirus pandemic, the potential for a no-deal Brexit and worsening geopolitical conflicts has forced them to reduce capital spending. – Guardian

A groundbreaking legal action kicks off today to test insurers’ claims that they are not liable for payouts demanded by businesses during the pandemic. The Financial Conduct Authority will face off against eight insurers, including Hiscox, QBE, RSA and Zurich to clarify whether business interruption cover sold by the firms should compensate them for losses suffered due to Covid-19 and the national lockdown. – Telegraph

Many of Britain’s biggest companies do not expect business to recover until at least next summer. In the latest sign that a V-shaped economic recovery is unlikely, almost half of chief financial officers surveyed predicted that demand for goods and services would not return to pre-lockdown levels until next July at the earliest. – The Times

Struggling councils have for years turned to commercial property investment as a source of income, but now they face a fall in rent caused by the pandemic. To save money they have already held emergency budget meetings and cut jobs and frontline services or drawn on savings that had been set aside for specific projects. – The Times

US close

Equities on Wall Street finished in a mixed state on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down 0.23% at 26,671.95.

The S&P 500, meanwhile, finished up 0.28% at 3,225.73, and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.28% firmer at 10,503.19.