On Friday, British equities concluded lower, with concerns of a global trade conflict affecting investor appetite after Donald Trump imposed import duties on $50 billion of China’s products.
Smiths Group managed to top the list of losers in London having reported a descend in revenue.
The FTSE 100 index UKX went down 0.4% being worth 6,921.94, concluding at its lowest value since December 2016. The London benchmark concluded down 3.4% for the week, which is its greatest weekly dive since early February.
The major UK currency rallied from $1.4096 to $1.4150 in New York late on Thursday.
On Friday, trade war worries rekindled after tensions between China and the United States ramped up. Trump’s intention to impose more duties on Chinese products have already caused threat of corresponding actions from the Asian leading economy, which declared its readiness to impose duties on $3 billion of American imports, including pork, fruit as well as recycled aluminum.
By the way, China’s tariff list didn’t come with big-ticket American exports, including Boeing airplanes and soybeans considered to be China’s leaving room to negotiate or escalate.
Aside from that the US President approved temporary exemptions from aluminum and steel duties until May 1 for such countries as South Korea, Australia, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil as well as European Union nations.
Equities of Smiths Group PLC SMIN headed south 4.4% after the engineering company’s revenue dived in the fiscal first half of 2018, affected by higher research costs as well as lower margin.
On a positive note, equities of Next PLC NXT headed north 7.7% right after the British high street retailer posted a sag in revenues that wasn’t as bad as anticipated.
The British pharma giant told that it has finished negotiations to purchase Pfizer Inc.’s PFE.
Source
RSS