Invesco makes £1m in a day from Safestyle punt
A CANNY punt on a tiny window replacement company has made fund house Invesco close to £1m in a day.
Invesco, which manages billions of pounds’ worth of UK savers’ money, decided on Friday to more than double its 5pc stake in Safestyle to 10.2pc. When Safestyle shares rocketed yesterday by 38.7pc, or 21.9p, to 78.5p, Friday’s deal alone bagged Invesco around £950,000.
Taking into account the shares it already owned in the window company, Invesco made £1.9m.
The shares shot up as Safestyle revealed it had entered into a noncompete agreement with Mitu Misra, the man behind its aggressive competitor Niamac.
Safestyle had been seeking damages against Niamac, which was calling itself Safeglaze, as it claimed the firm was trying to trick customers into believing the two businesses were related.
They settled the case, but the non-compete agreement included in this settlement will also ban Misra from setting up any similar business which could compete with Safestyle.
In the FTSE 100, encouraging results from new drug trials gave investors in pharmaceutical giants
Astrazeneca and Glaxosmithkline food for thought.
Astrazeneca announced its Lynparza drug cut the risk of disease progression or death in patients suffering from a particular type of ovarian cancer by 70pc.
Analysts had predicted that Astrazeneca would make £1.3bn by 2022 from sales of Lynparza, but Deutsche Bank’s Richard Parkes said this looks too conservative.
He added that the results increased his conviction the company deserved a ‘buy’ recommendation. Astrazeneca’s shares edged up by 0.7pc, or 41p, to 5975p.
Meanwhile rival GSK said that results from the trial of rheumatoid arthritis drug GSK 165 were ‘encouraging’ – even though it failed to produce significant results in a clinical assessment of patients’ symptoms.
GSK did say there was a ‘particularly marked’ improvement in patients’ own account of their symptoms, which include swollen and painful joints.
Investor uncertainty over the mixed trial results caused GSK’s shares to swing as high as 1564p, before ending the day down 1.14pc, or 17.8p, at 1539.8p.
Supermarket Morrisons also weighed on the FTSE 100, as it lost its challenge against a ruling which made it liable for a data breach where thousands of employees’ details were posted online.
The Court of Appeal upheld last December’s High Court decision, which said Morrisons should be held responsible for the leak of payroll data perpetrated by one of its internal auditors. The auditor himself, Andrew Skelton, has already been sentenced to eight years in jail for posting the information online.
Morrisons has said it will appeal the case to the Supreme Court. Its shares slipped by 0.02pc, or 0.05p, to 250.1p.
The FTSE 100 eventually closed down 0.1pc, or 7 points, at 7042.8.
Gulf-focused private hospital company NMC Health could not help the blue-chip index stay on solid ground despite yesterday increasing its revenue and earnings forecasts. NMC announced that full-year revenue should now grow by 24pc, up from 22pc, while earnings are expected to hit £370m instead of £358m. Shares climbed 5.6pc, or 170p, to 3200p. In the FTSE 250, budget retailer
B&M crept up 4.3pc, or 16.7p, to 402.1p after acquiring French chain Babou.
The deal valued 95-store Babou at £80.6m. B&M said it would immediately increase earnings, and help the Liverpool-based retailer move further into the European market.