10 things you need to know in markets today

10 things you need to know in markets today

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REUTERS/Toby Melville

Good morning! Here's what you need to know in markets on Monday.

1. Royal Bank of Scotland is preparing to cut more costs and chop more workers but played down reports it will cut 15,000 staff in the next round of shrinking. A spokesman told the Telegraph "we do not recognise" the 15,000 job cuts number which was reported in the Sunday Times.

2. The head of the International Monetary Fund says President Donald Trump taking office is likely good for the US economy in the short term, though rising American interest rates and a strengthening dollar will challenge global trade. Christine Lagarde said Trump's plans for additional investment in US infrastructure and his likely tax reforms will boost the American economy.

3. More than a quarter of employers in Britain say staff members from other European Union countries have considered leaving their firms or the country in 2017 after last year's Brexit vote, an industry group said on Monday. The proportion rose to 43% of employers in education and 49% in healthcare sector employers, according to a survey of more than 1,000 companies conducted by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

4. Stada, a German manufacturer of generic copies of drugs such as Viagra, has received two takeover proposals including a €3.5 billion (£2.9 billion, $3.7 billion) bid from private equity group Cinven, kicking off a bidding war for the company. The Financial Times reports that the offers come after a year-long activist campaign to improve Stada’s governance and profitability by one of its largest shareholders, the relatively unknown German activist investor Active Ownership Capital.

5. Drugmaker Sanofi is close to selling some over-the-counter products to Ipsen in a deal that could be valued at nearly €100 million (£85 million, $106.18 million), Bloomberg reports. The deal between the French drugmakers may be announced as early as Monday, Bloomberg says, citing a person familiar with the matter.

6. Japan's economy expanded for a fourth straight quarter in the October-December period as strong trade demand and a pickup in capital expenditure underscored a steady export-led recovery. Cabinet Office data on Monday showed the world's third-largest economy grew an annualized 1.0% in the final three months of 2016, roughly in line with the 1.1% increase markets had expected, following a revised 1.4% expansion in July-September.

7. Asian stock markets are higher. Japan's Nikkei closed up 0.44%, boosted by a weaker yen and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's successful meeting with President Trump, and the Hong Kong Hang Seng is up 0.32% at the time of writing (6.25 a.m. GMT/1.25 a.m. ET). China's Shanghai Composite is up 0.41% at the same time.

8. China is considering forcing steel and aluminium producers to cut more output, banning coal in one of the country's top ports and shutting some fertiliser and drug plants as Beijing intensifies its war on smog, a draft policy document shows. The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) has proposed the measures in a draft policy document seen by Reuters. If implemented, they would be some of the most radical steps so far to tackle air quality in the country's most polluted cities.

9. Music-streaming service SoundCloud has lost two senior executives and is seeking to raise new funding, the company said on Sunday, but denied a Financial Times report that it was running low on cash. Marc Strigel, SoundCloud's chief operating officer, and finance director Markus Harder left after five years with the company to pursue new opportunities, a spokeswoman for Berlin-based SoundCloud said, without giving details.

10. House of Fraser's £35 million investment in digital bank Tandem is "pretty core to their strategy, actually developing a financial services relationship," Tandem cofounder Ricky Knox told BI. Knox explained why the department store decided to take a big investment in the startup bank last December, saying: "Their challenge and opportunity is to develop a deeper relationship with the customer and figure out some sticky long-term revenue streams."

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• 10 things you need to know in markets today
• 10 things you need to know in markets today

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February 12, 2017 at 05:12PM