Market Live Email
Halma announces bolt-on acquisition, Sainsbury's reiterates profit targets
By Benjamin Chiou
Date: Friday 09 Jan 2026
(Sharecast News) - LONDON PRE-OPEN
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 21.5 points higher (+0.21%) after slipping just 3.5 points (-0.04%) to 10,044.69 on Thursday.
STOCKS TO WATCH
Safety equipment maker Halma said it had bought Italian firm Safetec for €72.5m (£63m), on a cash- and debt-free basis, to be funded from Halma's existing facilities. Founded in 2003 and headquartered near Milan, Italy, Safetec designs, engineers and delivers customised fire and gas safety solutions for large-scale, complex and high-risk industrial projects.
J Sainsbury said it remained on track to deliver annual retail profits of more than £1bn, following strong demand for food and drink in the run up to Christmas. The supermarket, the UK's second-largest after Tesco, saw grocery sales jump 5.1% in the six weeks to 3 January, and 5.4% over the quarter. The strong showing helped offset weaker sales elsewhere.
NEWSPAPER ROUND-UP
The UK Treasury has a "limited grasp" of concerns linked to the booming shadow banking sector and may not be prepared for risks the unregulated industry poses to financial stability, peers have said. While a lack of data makes it hard to say whether the $16tn (£12tn) non-bank financial sector could bring the wider financial system to its knees, officials do not seem to be alive to the potential risks, according to a Lords financial services regulation committee report. - Guardian
The software company belonging to the Tory donor Frank Hester, a major contractor to the NHS, has paid a £50m dividend after sales and profits surged. TPP Group, which was founded by Hester in 1997 as The Phoenix Partnership, specialises in healthcare technology and provides its SystmOne software to the NHS. The company says it is used by 7,800 NHS organisations, including more than 2,600 GP practices and a third of acute mental health trusts, with 61m electronic health records stored in its database. It has also expanded abroad, including to China, the Middle East and the Caribbean. - Guardian
Soho House's $1.8bn (£1.3bn) takeover deal has been thrown into jeopardy after a key backer revealed it was struggling to fund the purchase. The private members' club revealed on Thursday that US hotel giant MCR Hotels - which is leading a consortium to buy the group - was unable to fully fund its pledge to pay $200m towards the deal. MCR is the third-largest hotel operator in the US and its portfolio includes the famous 1960s-themed TWA Hotel at JFK Airport and BT Tower in London. - Telegraph
Britain could ban Elon Musk's X amid a row over its AI undressing women and children in photographs. Sir Keir Starmer said yesterday that he had asked media regulator Ofcom for "all options to be on the table" after it emerged that child sexual abuse images had been generated using X's AI chatbot, Grok. No 10 sources pointed to the full powers of the Online Safety Act, which include fines of billions of pounds or even blocking access to X in Britain. The social media site has around 650 million users worldwide including 20 million in the UK. - Telegraph
Terry Smith has stood by his faltering investment strategy even after his main £16 billion fund underperformed the stock market for a fifth year in a row. His Fundsmith Equity portfolio returned just 0.8 per cent last year, lagging far behind the 12.8 per cent delivered by the MSCI World Index. - The Times
US CLOSE
US stocks finished mixed on Thursday with the Dow and S&P 500 closing in the green but the Nasdaq slipping, as nervousness ahead of Friday's non-farm payrolls report weighed on risk appetite.
The Dow, which set a new record on Tuesday before retreating on Wednesday, finished 0.6% higher at 49,266.11. The S&P 500, which also reached a new high this week, finished just 0.01% higher at 6,921.46, having stayed within a narrow range for most of the day.
The Nasdaq, however, slipped 0.4% to 23,480.02, following three straight days of gains as investors scaled back positions in tech stocks.
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