Futures prices predict London will drop about 17 points early Tuesday as Wall Street closed below 10,000 for the first time in four months last night.

BSkyB has sold a 10.4% stake in struggling broadcaster ITV for £196m following a two year legal battle to hang onto the shares. The pay-TV group said it intends to retain its residual 7.5% investment in ITV for the 'medium term'. BSkyB bought the stake in 2006 to block an attempt to take over ITV by Virgin Media. It placed 404m shares at 48.5p each, but had bought the stake at 135p a share.

British Land saw a revival in its portfolio in Q3 with 'strong' valuation growth across all types of its properties. The property portfolio valuation rose by 8.2% in the last three months of 2009 and contributed to an overall uplift of 6.1% for the nine months. NAV rose 18% to 438p and underlying profit before tax came in at £58m. Including property write-downs, pre-tax profit was £611m against a loss of £1.6bn a year earlier.

Homeserve's executive chairman Brian Whitty is stepping down after 14 years at the company just as the home maintenance specialist predicts 'another year of strong growth'. Whitty, chairman since April 2004, will hand over to Barry Gibson, currently senior independent non-executive director, on 1 April. In today's trading update, Homerserve said all its policy membership businesses have performed well since October and it now has 10m policies from 4.5m customers worldwide.

Elsewhere, traders and hedge funds have bet nearly $8bn (£5.1bn) against the euro, amassing the biggest ever short position in the single currency on fears of a eurozone debt crisis, the FT reports.

Figures from CME Group showed the build-up in net short positions in the week to 2 February represents more than 40,000 contracts traded against the euro, equivalent to $7.6bn. It suggests investors are losing confidence in the single currency's ability to withstand any contagion from Greece's budget problems affecting other European countries, says the paper.

Related share prices
British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSY) share price
British Land Co (BLND) share price
Homeserve (HSV) share price
ITV (ITV) share price