London pre-open: Pru eyes AIG's Asian jewels

1st Mar 2010 07:42

Leading shares are set to start the week on a firm footing with market traders anticipating the blue-chip Footsie index will start around 40 points higher.Life assurance group Prudential is sure to attract a lot of attention in early trading. The group has confirmed week-end press reports that it is in talks with AIG about acquiring the troubled US insurer’s Asian business for around $35bn. If it goes ahead the acquisition will be funded by the largest rights issue ever seen in the UK. There had been speculation that the Pru would seek to offload its UK life assurance operations to acquisitive insurance group Resolution to raise money for the Asian acquisition and while this may yet happen Resolution has responded to the speculation by saying that it is not in discussions with Prudential.Educational and financial information publisher Pearson bumped up sales and profits in 2009 helped by favourable exchange rate movements. Sales in 2009 at £5,624m were 17% higher than 2008’s £4,811m but were up just 4% at constant exchange rates. Adjusted pre-tax profit also rose 13%, to £761m from £674m. Market expectations were for a pre-tax profit of around £725.68m.Engineer Tomkins moved modestly back into profit last year, but cautioned that conditions remain challenging and any sustained recovery will be towards the latter half of the year. The group posted a pre-tax profit of $38.4m in 2009 against a loss of $8.1m the previous year, but remained in deficit after tax with a net loss of $15.6m against $64.6m. Sales tumbled from $5.52bn to $41.28bn.