London’s blue chips got off to an ugly start as BP unveiled a huge loss though the dividend was unchanged.
FTSE 100 shed 76 points to 5,984 with losses overnight in Asia adding to the nervy mood.
BP (LON:BP.) though made the headlines, with analysts saying it was the company’s worst loss for 20 years.
The impact of steeply lower oil and gas prices on its production arm, which reported a pre-tax loss for the quarter, were the cause said the oil major.
That its dividend was left intact was one consolation, but it "is a mile away from being covered by earnings and the market is saying this is unsustainable,” said Steve Clayton at Hargreaves Lansdown. Shares fell 7% to 342p, while Shell fell 44p at 1,456p.
Yesterday was football’s transfer window close, but after an underwhelming day for Sky’s army of football analysts it was left to Sainsbury’s (LON:SBRY) to pull the ‘big one’ out of the hat.
The Takeover Panel’s ‘put up or shut up’ ruling was 2 February and the supermarket chain decided to put up, with a deal to buy Argos owner Home Retail (LON:HOME) for about £1.3bn.
The supermarket chain and Home Retail said they had reached an agreement whereby the latter's shareholders would receive 0.321 new Sainsbury shares plus 55p in cash for each Home Retail share. With a few other embellishments, the deal is worth 161.3p per share.
Sainsbury’s jumped 2.7% to 251.3p, as the market decided it had not overpayed. Home Retail rose to 153.6p.
Other big cap movers included miner BHP Billiton (LON:BLT) after a ratings downgrade by Standard & Poors, which knocked onto others in the sector.
Elsewhere, TalkTalk (LON:TALK) soared 9% to 236.6p on a good looking set of underlying numbers, a higher dividend and forecast of much better times ahead. Statutory results were affected by the well-publicised cyber attack last year.
Elsewhere, Gulf Keystone (LON:GKP) made more strong gains following changes to the oil payment terms in Kurdistan yesterday. GKP shares jumped 20% to 17.4p.
A funding for Zincox (LON:ZOX) sent the zinc recycling specialist up by 63% to 0.9p, while junior gold miner Hummingbird (LON:HUMM) rose 5% to 15.5p as it announced a potential extension to its Yanfolila gold project in Mali.
Junior gold miners have been strong recently on the back of the rise in the gold price.