Market Report: Investors pile in as Carphone Warehouse agrees deal with Samsung

 

Laura Chesters
Wednesday 29 January 2014 23:30 GMT
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Last year Carphone Warehouse hung up on its partnership with US retailer Best Buy, but today it picked up new partner Samsung and approving investors piled in.

Carphone has agreed a deal with the Korean electronics group to open and run 60 Samsung branded shops across Europe. The deal follows recent strong trading for 4G products at the retailer’s shops. Carphone jumped 18p to 287.2p – top of the mid-tier table – and is up 11 per cent since the start of November.

The wider market digested the rates move by the Turkish central bank. Will Nicholls, a dealer at spreadbetter Capital Spreads, said: “Investors considered the rate hike and it has generally gone down badly, seen as a desperate measure to protect their currency without really thinking through the consequences.” Amid further emerging market concerns and ahead of last nights’ Federal Open Market Committee meeting the FTSE 100 lost 28.05 points to 6,544.28.

An upbeat trading statement from Anglo American with better-than-expected iron ore production and copper output helped it advance 77p to 1,420.5p. This performance was mirrored by Chilean copper miner Antofagasta, which also climbed 50p to 872.5p, top of the benchmark table as the mining sector became a favourite for the day.

ITV will launch a new pay TV channel, ITV Encore, as part of a wider four-year partnership with British Sky Broadcasting. ITV’s content will be made available across BSkyB’s Sky+HD, Sky Go, Sky Store and its on demand service, but BSkyB weakened 22.5p to 844.5p while ITV climbed 1.1p to 197.7p.

Rumours of M&A in the water sector continued to bubble under and some traders speculated United Utilities could be the subject of a bid later this year. But United Utilities lost 18p to 719p. Severn Trent dipped 22p to 1,756p, while Pennon, which went ex-dividend, fell 20p to 678.5p.

Merlin Entertainments got the thumbs up from analysts at Jefferies. The group listed on the FTSE 250 at 315p last year and the broker predicted shares could reach 425p. But for now they eased 0.7p to 367.5p.

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