A big week for news and earnings from the UK‘s largest companies with taxpayer-owned RBS (LON:RBS) making headlines for the right reasons for once.
Shares in the bank shot up in as it took the market off-guard by releasing first half numbers a week early on Friday.
Pre-tax profits will nearly double from last year to £2.6bn (2013: £1.37bn) after a good performance by its 'bad bank " division and better credit conditions.
Significantly, the operating profit jumped to £2.6bn, up from £708 mln in the first half last year.
However, chief executive Ross McEwan did sound a note of caution about the road ahead, including litigation issue, which will likely hit profits ahead.
Litigation was also an issue at Barclays (LON:BARC), where the UK bank is not going quietly its ‘dark pool’ operation in the US.
The bank was charged in June with fraud over the operation of the business by the New York Attorney General.
Barclays has now filed a motion to dismiss on procedural and case law grounds and that Eric Schneiderman, the NY Attorney General, did not have the authority to accuse the bank.
BSkyB’s (LON:BSY) plans to dominate the Eiropean Pay-TV space were confirmed as it launch its bid for of 21st Century Fox’s interests in Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland.
Sky is paying £4.9bn to Fox to acquire Sky Italia and a 57.4% stake in Sky Deutschland.
And it is now making a €6.75 per share offer to buy-out the minority shareholders in the German unit, which could take total acquisition costs to £7bn.
Tesco (LON:TSCO) was the big story at the beginning of the week as Philip Clarke announced his departure from Britain's largest retailer.
Not that investors were pining for too long, the as the shares were among the best performing on Footsie on the day.
Clarke heads for the exit checkout after getting the top job in 2011. He leaves in October, making way for Dave Lewis, who has been recruited from the consumer brands giant Unilever (LON:ULVR).
Weather again had a major impact on B&Q owner Kingfisher.
Boss Sir Ian Cheshire said after good weather earlier in the year, but markets over the three months were even slower than expected, especially June.
“It is unclear whether this recent weakness is short term phasing in nature, though we will know more by our interims in September having then traded through our key summer months,” he added.
Budget airline easyJet (LON:EZJ) dropped more than 4% in early deals as profit forecasts fell short of market expectations.
easyJet estimates pre-tax profits of £545mln to £570mln for the full year to September 30 – which was on the low side of consensus estimates of £572mln.
The third quarter trading update revealed revenues had grown 8.6% to £1.24bn, in the three months to June 30, while passenger numbers increase 9.4% to 17.9mln. The load factor increased to 90.4%.
Over the week, the FTSE 100 rose about 50 points to just over 6,800 by Friday afternoon.