(ShareCast News) - London's FTSE 100 is seen starting 21 points lower than Friday's close at 5,891.
Stocks to watch

Taylor Wimpey has indicated 2015 was a year of steady growth, and has indicated it is starting the new year with a strong order book.

In a trading statement released on Monday, the FTSE 100 housebuilder reported total UK home completions increased by 7% to 13,341, including 2,509 affordable homes.

The average selling price on private completions increased by 9% to £254,000 after the company said it focused on better quality locations.

It also said it finished the year with a record year end order book, increasing by 27% to £1.779bn.

Northgate's group finance director Chris Muir, who has been with the company for over 12 years, will leave with effect from 31 March.

The light commercial vehicle hire company said it had agreed with Muir that "the development was in their mutual interests".

Northgate said the search for his successor is progressing well and it will make a further announcement in due course.

Muir originally joined the company in 2003, becoming group financial controller a year later and UK finance director in 2006. He was appointed to the board as group FD in May 2011.

International real estate firm Savills said underlying full year results will be ahead of previous expectations although it warned that global economic uncertainty and rising interest rates would result in a "tempering" of transaction volumes.

"The group experienced a strong finish to the year with the completion of some significant commercial transactions in several of our businesses around the world," Savills said.

"In the light of heightened uncertainty over global economic prospects and rising interest rates, we expect a tempering of the strong transaction volumes of recent times in certain markets, notwithstanding that market fundamentals remain sound. Accordingly we retain our original expectations for 2016."

In the press


China has opened a new front in its war to curb currency depreciation by buying up renminbi offshore, foiling the burgeoning carry trade and driving the cost of borrowing to a record high. The overnight CNH Hibor, a daily benchmark for offshore renminbi interbank lending, hit a record-high 13.4% on Monday, up from 4% on Friday and the highest level since the benchmark was launched in 2013. The one-week rate surged from 7.1% to 11.2%. - Financial Times

Japanese beverage maker Asahi is planning to wade into the bidding for Grolsch and Peroni, with a £2.4bn bid for the popular European beer brands, the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Shimbu newspaper has reported. Grolsch and Peroni are being off-loaded by Anheuser-Busch InBev, as part of its mammoth takeover of FTSE-100 brewer SAB Miller, dubbed "Megabrew". The $100bn deal will be one of the biggest ever seen. - The Daily Telegraph

The boss of Asda has warned that Britain's struggling supermarkets will face further challenges in 2016 as it fires the first salvo of the year in the industry's savage price wars. Andy Clarke has said he is pumping a further £500m into slashing prices at the grocer as it faces another brutal year of intense pressure. - The Daily Telegraph

US close

On Friday the S&P 500 finished the first four trading days of 2016 with a fall of 4.9%, the worst start to a year ever recorded, despite the release of what most analysts appeared to agree was a better than expected reading on non-farm payrolls, although a reading on wage growth disappointed, and a small bounce overnight in Chinese stocks.

In the last trading session of the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 1.02% and surrendered another 168 points, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.97% and the S&P 500 another 1.09%.

Treasuries clocked in with their best weekly showing since 2011 while oil futures were left nursing a weekly loss of approximately 10%.

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