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Time now to take a look at some of the stocks on the move today in Europe. I'm Stephen Carroll and I'm joined by Bloomberg's Breaking News editor Louise Moon. Louise, good morning. Let's start with W H Smith sheristown six over six percent in London. What's going wrong? So?
WH Smith had confirmed this morning that they're under investigation by the FCA, so that's obviously the financial regulator here in London. So this is all This is an ongoing saga that's been happening for the last few months over a accounting era for W Smith and that the accounting era was focused in America. So W Smith set out their own findings. They had a probe that Deloitte implemented.
They set up those findings in November and essentially one of the reasons that Deloitte found was that there was a lack of oversight for W. Brick Smith that led to the CEO resigning, their stock also slumping, and so today it's been announced that the financial regulator is looking into this, so that was kind of a key bit of news it's really been focused on. But also on top of that, and as a result of all of this, they've also cut their dividend for the first time since
the pandemic. And these results were already delayed. They've been pushed back twice and in that time w Smith has lowered its outlook twice. So unsurprisingly, as you say that the stock is tumbling this morning and it's not recovering from the last few months, you know, you look back, I mean, well the year to date that they're down over about forty percent, and then there's the added losses today, so it could be heading for its worst year on
record as a stock. So and this is saying, you know, the whole credibility hangs in the balance here, so we keep a close eye on the FCA's probe and what they find and what that could result in.
Yeah, and want to watch, as you say, let's go to Spain next, BBVA announcing it's largest ever share buyback.
Yeah, a slight slightly different story. They're a bit more of a positive one. So they're announcing just under four billion euros buy back. Yeah, large as ever, as you say, that's going to be in two stages and run for about a year, about twelve months, so the first stage will start on Monday. That's worth about one point five billion euros. This was quite expected. This large power was quite expected. So shares are hire but only just slightly
ticking into the green. And the reason it's expected. It all comes after bbva's failed bid for Sabadults that collapse in October, which was quite a big setback for the CEO. He'd been working on that for about a year and a half and at the time they said that they would carry out what they called significant a significant share buyback instead. So this is part of their strategy to kind of draw a line under that failed bid and move forward. So this was quite expected. Estimates had ranged
up to about six billion. But yeah, so announcing their largest ever buy back this morning and shares ticking higher on that.
Okay, And you're also looking at shars and the French pharmaceutical firm Ibsen as well, they're lower this morning. What's going on they are?
So just a quick one on them. Their midstage trial for one of their experimental drugs failed essentially, so this was for. This was an oral drug for a very rare bone disease, and it didn't meet the primary endpoints. The study gone on for five years and it's now going to be closed. So Alyss saying, you know, the hopes are dashed of developing this treatment. And I was just reading a good note from Bloombone Intelligence saying that
this is disappointing. It was one of the few tools that Ibsen had to offset a lot of competition, and that this failure to develop this drug now highlights how important it is for them to go ahead with M and A to boost their growth. So, as you say, shares are falling quite heavily on the back of that.
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