Greene King, up 0.3%, is reportedly in talks over the sale of around 300 pubs to a private equity firm, May Capital. ARM holdings fell 4.9%. William Blair upgraded its rating on the shares to an “Outperform”. Separately the company announced that Eric Meurice will be stepping down as an Independent Non-Executive Director, effective from 31 March. Johnson Matthey, down 5.5%, announced that it has entered into a contract for the supply of technology licence, engineering, catalyst and technical services for Qianan Hong Ao Industrial Trade Co. Ltd’s methanation plant in China. Oriel Securities restated its “Buy” rating on the shares of DS Smith, down 6.6%, with a target price of 389p. Aveva Group, down 4.6%, has announced that its AVEVA E3D Insight is now commercially available for project decision makers in the power, process plant and mining industries.
Frontier Developments jumped 13% as it released its ‘Elite: Dangerous’ Alpha phase 3.0 to eligible backers. The video games developer also agreed to sell its 100% owned subsidiary FML Kazakhstan LLP for a cash consideration of $30 million to Union Transnationale Miniere. Panmure Gordon reissued its “Buy” rating on Brady’s shares, up 5.3%, and set a price target of 88p. 1Spatial, up 1.4%, has appointed company veteran, Martin Gregory, to the position of General Manager, 1Spatial Asia Pacific. Tristel, a company which specialises in infection control products, rose 6.7% after a circular published by Public Health England pointed that ‘carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae’ is one of the most serious emerging infectious disease threats currently faced. Scientific Digital Imaging, up 1.1%, introduced its new high sensitivity G:BOXChemi XX6 and XX9 image analysis systems.
Liberum Capital downgraded its rating to “Hold” with a target price of 1,915p on shares of Kier Group, which fell 8.3%. Xaar, down 6.4%, announced its launch of the ‘All New Xaar 1002 GS6’ for UV applications. Goldman Sachs restated its “Conviction-Buy” rating and assigned a target price of 340p for Blinkx, down 2.7%. N+1 Singer reissued its “Buy” rating on the shares of Vernalis, down 2.1%, with a price target of 43p. Cambridge Cognition Holdings fell 6.9%, after it recorded a pre-tax loss of £3m in 2013.
UK markets ended the week on a negative note, as the failure of Ukraine to end disagreements with Russia and a series of tepid domestic data from UK continued to weigh on investor sentiment. The FTSE 100 index fell2.8%, to 6,527.9, the FTSE techMARK 100 Index dropped 3.5% to 3,152.7, and the FTSE AIM 100 Index slipped 3.4%, to 3,933.4.
At the end of the week, US markets ended lower, as mounting differences with Russia regarding the Crimea and Chinese slowdown fears overshadowed the recent mixed set of economic data from US. The DJIA index dipped 2.4%, to close at 16,065.7. The NASDAQ index fell 2.1%, to settle at 4,245.4.