Brewin Dolphin to be acquired by RBC, Provident Financial reinstates dividend

London pre-open

The FTSE 100 was being called to open just 2.9 points higher ahead of the bell on Thursday after closing out the previous session 0.55% firmer at 7,578.75.

Stocks to watch

Self-storage outfit Safestore has acquired the remaining 80% of its Netherlands and Belgium-focussed joint venture with Carlyle Europe Realty.

Safestore said on Thursday that it will part with a total of €139.0m in cash for the joint venture, including the share purchase of €67.0m, with a further €67.0m to go towards refinancing existing borrowings and another €5.0m to cover transfer taxes and other deal costs. The acquisition was funded from the group's existing loan facilities.

Royal Bank of Canada revealed on Thursday that it will acquire UK wealth manager Brewin Dolphin after the pair agreed to a £1.6bn deal.

The Canadian bank will pay a total of 515.0p a share for Brewin Dolphin, a 62% premium to the stock's closing price on Wednesday. RBC added that it expects only "limited" job losses in "functional and administrative areas".

Provident Financial reinstated its dividend on Thursday, with the group vowing to return 12.0p per share to investors as the subprime lender returned to profit after bad-debt impairments dropped from £312.6m to £50.4m.

Provident stated that full-year adjusted pre-tax profits had come to £64.8m, a marked improvement when compared to the £54.6m loss posted a year earlier, and comes despite the FTSE 250-listed firm witnessing revenue fall to £534.6m from £615.4m.

Newspaper round-up

Almost 500 "ghost flights" a month departed from the UK between October and December 2021, data has revealed. The information, obtained through a freedom of information request by the Guardian, shows Heathrow, Aberdeen, Manchester, Stansted and Norwich were the top five airports for such flights during the period. - Guardian

Auditors have warned about the financial health of the company behind the Stanlow oil refinery, despite its efforts to refinance loans and settle a debt to HM Revenue and Customs. Documents filed at Companies House show that losses at Essar Oil deepened from $221.0m to $321.0m in 2021, a year in which government officials became concerned about the financial position of the company, which supplies 16% of UK road fuel from its refinery in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. - Guardian

Hundreds of thousands of households risk paying an extra £1,700 a year on their mortgages as a wave of cheap fixed-rate deals struck five years ago end. Analysts are bracing for a rush of remortgaging as homeowners try to beat interest rate rises and loans taken out in 2018 come up for renewal. However, those remortgaging will face a jump in monthly repayments as markets brace for the Bank of England to raise rates to more than 2% in a bid to curb inflation. - Telegraph

Ministers are rowing back from a radical plan to encourage pension funds to invest in unlisted assets after getting a mixed response from the investment industry and an emphatic thumbs-down from consumer groups. A plan to relax the ceiling on charges paid by pension funds so that private equity houses could take 20% of any profits made from a pension fund's unlisted investments came under particular fire. - The Times

The fall of a former star fund manager who used a Greensill private jet for a personal trip to Sardinia should sound a "clear warning" to the City, the financial regulator has said. The Financial Conduct Authority yesterday set out the full detail of its decision late last year to fine the British subsidiary of Gam Holding, the Swiss asset manager, £9.1m and Tim Haywood, who was sacked from the group in 2019 for "gross misconduct", £230,000 for conflict of interest failings linked to Greensill. The supply chain finance company collapsed in March last year and has become embroiled in a lobbying scandal. - The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks closed lower on Wednesday, with the Dow Jones and S&P snapping a four-day winning streak as traders continued to monitor developments in Ukraine.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.19% at 35,228.81, while the S&P 500 lost 0.63% to 4,602.45 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 1.21% weaker at 14,442.27.