A tough week for Morrisons looks set to continue as it readies itself for demotion from the list of London’s 100 blue-chip stocks (The Times). A FTSE committee is scheduled to review the constituents of the FTSE 100 and 250 tomorrow using the closing prices from today’s session. Morrisons moved into the FTSE 100 back in 2001 but has had a turbulent year as it suffered badly at the hands of the discounters. Its fall from the leading index would come in a week in which Thursday’s AGM is expected to feature protests at the massive payoff for former CEO Dalton Philips and this morning’s latest Kantar figures. Discount chain B&M European Value Retail is one of the companies jostling for promotion to the FTSE 250.
A Canadian court last night ordered the country’s three largest tobacco companies to pay C$15.5bn (£8bn) to smokers who claimed that they had never been warned about the dangers of smoking (The Times). It is the largest award for damages in the country’s history. British American Tobacco, whose Canadian subsidiary is one of the three companies along with Rothmans Benson & Hedges and JTI-MacDonald, said there were “strong grounds for appeal” (The Telegraph).
Kraft Foods two successor companies said they were acting rationally in the face of a “dysfunctional” wheat market when it made a series of aggressive trades in late 2011. It is the snacks group’s said first detailed rebuttal of government charges that it manipulated the price of the grain (The Financial Times). Kraft Foods Group and Mondelez are accused of taking a massive position in Chicago wheat futures in late 2011 to net $5.4m in profits.
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