IG Group flags strong full-year earnings, Anglo American appoints technical director
By Josh White
Date: Monday 12 May 2025
(Sharecast News) - London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 21 points higher on Monday, having closed up 0.27% at 8,554.80 on Friday.
Stocks to watch
Online trading platform IG Group said it expected annual earnings and revenue to meet or slightly exceed the upper end of the current range of consensus forecasts after volatile markets drove higher-than-expected levels of client trading in the fourth quarter.
Anglo American has appointed Tom McClulley, the former head of its Peruvian division, as its new technical director. In a statement on Monday, the diversified mining giant said its current technical director of two years, Matt Daley, has decided to take up a senior executive role elsewhere.
Victrex reported a 16% increase in volumes for its first half on Monday, prompting an upgrade to full-year volume guidance, though revenue rose just 5% due to adverse currency effects and product mix. The FTSE 250 performance polymer specialist said underlying profit before tax fell 17% to £23.2m, largely due to currency headwinds and a slower ramp-up in China, although it remained flat in constant currency.
Newspaper round-up
UK employers laid off staff in April at a faster pace than the previous month as the combination of higher employment costs and shock waves from Donald Trump's tariff war sent boardroom confidence levels plummeting. The human resources association, CIPD, said employer confidence levels slumped to an all-time low, prompting job cuts and a widespread hiring freeze. - Guardian
Food retailers have seen a "massive" increase in pensioner shoplifters over the last year, according to a leading store security firm, amid the rising cost of living. John Nussbaum, director of service for retail at Kingdom Services Group, has said his staff were seeing a "different sort of shoplifter now" as the cost of living "pushes people to something they've never done before". - Guardian
Angela Rayner's plan to overhaul workers' rights has crushed business confidence to a record low, as bosses prepare to slash jobs and curb hiring. Optimism among employers has fallen to levels not seen outside of the pandemic, according to a new survey, with just 25pc of bosses claiming they expect to increase headcount over the next three months. This is the lowest level since late 2020, when Britain was still in the depths of Covid. - Telegraph
A Ministry of Defence and Border Force supplier is being prosecuted for alleged bribery, forgery and money laundering and pursued over claims it violated sanctions. Damen Shipyards, which has supplied boats used by the UK government to test military technology, monitor Britain's borders and pick up migrants in the Channel, is being prosecuted in the Netherlands over criminal allegations related to its international sales. - The Times
More than 200 employers have expressed interest in taking part in a pioneering type of retirement scheme that proponents say could generate worker pensions 20 per cent to 50 per cent larger for the same outlay and risk. The pensions administrator TPT, which announced on May 8 that it was pressing ahead with the country's first multi-employer collective defined contribution (CDC) scheme, said it was confident it can reach the critical mass needed to be viable. - The Times
US close
Major indices were mostly lower at the close of trading on Friday as market participants looked ahead to talks with Chinese officials over the weekend.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.29% at 41,429.38, while the S&P 500 lost 0.07% to 5,659.91 and the Nasdaq Composite was flat at 17,928.92.
The Dow closed 119.07 points lower on Friday, taking a bite out of gains recorded in the previous session after the White House announced it had struck a trade deal with Westminster, the first deal since Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs were unveiled on 2 April.
Trade was in focus again on Friday, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and trade representative Jamieson Greer both set to meet with their Chinese counterparts in Switzerland over the weekend.
The US has kept its 145% tariff rate on Chinese imports unchanged, despite having already instituted a 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries, but Trump said on Friday that an "80% Tariff on China seems right" ahead of talks.
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