US stock are climbing at the open:

• Dow is up 0.22%
• S&P 500 is up 0.28%
• Nasdaq is up 0.5%

Loss-making lender TSB has reportedly been put up for sale by its Spanish owners, less than five years after its £1.7bn takeover.

Reuters, citing a source, says Goldman Sachs was hired in July to explore various options for the lender. However, it has now been tasked with the sale of TSB. There are no details about whether there is any deadline for its planned sale.

TSB’s takeover in 2015 was – at the time – one of the biggest cross-border banking deals since the financial crisis.

However, the lender reputation was later tarnished due a major meltdown in 2018, following the botched launch of its new IT system.

Millions of customers suffered severe disruptions online and in branches in the weeks that followed the botched launch.

Its chief executive at the time, Paul Pester resigned as TSB chief executive following intense criticism from regulators and MPs. He gave up his 2018 bonus related to the migration but was still granted just over £800,000 in severance pay.

Former CYBG executive Debbie Crosbie has since taken his place and has embarked on a three-year turnaround plan that has so far resulted in plans to cut nearly 1000 staff and close 164 branches over the coming months.

TSB reported a £65.5m loss for the first half of 2019 compared with a profit of £21.1m a year earlier, after taking a £111m loan loss charge.

BREAKING: Sabadell has given Goldman Sachs a mandate to sell its UK bank TSB.

That’s according to Reuters, citing a source.

We’re less than an hour and a half out from the US market open.

Wall Street is expected to trade higher in a truncated session following Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday:

• Dow futures are up 0.2%
• S&P futures are up 0.2%
• Nasdaq futures are up 0.4%

Time to check back in with European stocks.

The FTSE 100 and 250 are the outliers, trading lower on the back of regional lockdown news, Brexit jitters and questions over the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine which is set to undergo a new trial.

• FTSE 100 is down 0.4%
• FTSE 250 is down 0.8%
• Germany’s DAX is up 0.3%
• France’s CAC 40 is up 0.5%
• Italy’s FTSE MIB is up 0.4%

AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould says regional Covid restrictions have had a surprisingly strong impact on UK stocks:

One would have thought the lifting of the month-long lockdown would have given a boost to investor sentiment, yet we’re rounding off a week where markets ground to a halt.

The FTSE 250 was always going to be more sensitive to developments with business and society restrictions as it has a greater amount of UK-focused companies than the FTSE 100.

The mid cap index is on track to finish the week 1% lower at 19,506. However, the more international-focused FTSE 100 has also gone nowhere, flat on the week at 6,325.

Following up on reports that the Sir Phillip Green-owned Arcadia Group is on the brink of administration, Reuters says the group is working on “contingency” plans.

Arcadia has said that its boards have been working on a number of contingency options to secure a future of the group’s brands.

They have also said that their brands – which include Topshop, Burton and Dorothy Perkins – will be reopening again in England and Ireland as soon as government Covid restrictions are lifted next week.

The UK’s decision to the quarantine period for travellers returning to the UK from mid-December is already boosting travel demand, according to the boss of Gatwick Airport.

It comes after the UK announced quarantine from high risk countries would be slashed from 14 days to five, if passengers book and pay for a Covid-19 test from a private provider on the gov.uk list.

Gatwick’s chief executive Stewart Wingate told Reuters in an interview that by mid-December there would be about 100 flights operating per day thanks to higher demand.

That compares to just four flights a day during the current England-wide lockdown.

He said:

We are seeing already an uptick in flights, so we should expect to see about 100 flights per day by the time we get to the middle of December, and across the Christmas period.

In further bad news for the high street, Sky News is reporting that the owner of brands including Topshop and Miss Selfridge is preparing to appoint administrators from Deloitte as early as next week.

There are further questions about what the future of TSB might look like after its Spanish owner Sabadell confirmed it was calling of merger talks with its larger rival BBVA over price disagreements.

Sabadell said talks stalled after they failed to agree on an exchange ratio of their shares for a deal.

Sabadell, which bought TSB in 2015, says it is now embarking on a new strategy that “will prioritise its Spanish domestic business.”

It added that:

Sabadell will also analyse strategic alternatives for creating shareholder value with regard to the group’s international assets, including TSB.

The new strategy details will only be revealed in the first quarter, and in the meantime it raises questions about what a “strategic alternative” for TSB looks like.

The UK bank is already slashing nearly 1,000 jobs and closing around 164 branches to help cut costs as part of a three year turnaround plan under its new boss Debbie Crosbie. Meanwhile, like most UK lenders it has had to put aside more cash in case more of its customers default due to the Covid crisis.

Whether its cost-cutting strategies will be enough to convince Sabadell that the UK bank remains a strong asset, rather than a distraction from its new domestic priorities, remains to be seen.

Connor Campbell, a financial analyst at SpreadEx, weighs in on the FTSE slump:

While the rest of the markets struggled out of bed, the FTSE woke up with a splitting headache this Friday.

It appears that investors haven’t taken the latest Covid-19 Tier designations well. With most of the UK set to come out of lockdown into the top 2 most severe levels, the FTSE sank 1% after the bell, forcing the index back towards 6,300.

The hospitality and leisure sectors once again were among the worst hit, ensuring that the UK-focused FTSE 250 also dropped 1%.

The pound, meanwhile, edged 0.1% higher against the dollar but failed to move against the euro, as sterling continues to nervously wait for signs that the current Brexit talks are going to finally produce a deal before the end of the year. It’s not looking too promising.

Update: EU negotiator Michel Barnier confirms he’s travelling to London tonight to continue face-to-face Brexit talks this weekend.

We’ll get a fuller picture of the success of today’s Black Friday deals come Monday, but as my colleague Zoe Wood explains, total sales are set to soar.

Black Friday is expected to smash online sales records this year as struggling retailers slash prices in a desperate attempt to drum up trade after a lost November on the high street.

The discount day has become the biggest shopping event of the year but the stakes are far higher this time round as coronavirus restrictions mean some retailers have shops closed in three of the four home nations.

The virtual high street has already gone into overdrive. Last week online sales were 56% higher than in 2019, according to the internet industry body IMRG, with the stellar run of growth pointing to a “record-breaking month for online retail”.

Richard Lim, the chief executive of Retail Economics, said the success of Black Friday was easy to explain:

Consumers love discounts. If shoppers are looking to bring forward their Christmas shopping, retailers don’t want to lose market share to their competitors. They have to have skin in the game.

Some retailers have been running Black Friday promotions since the start of November but the volume of the deals has increased in recent days. It reaches a crescendo on Friday as companies set out their stall for a long weekend of shopping.

Fashion chains have been among the hardest hit by the shift to homeworking and curbs on socialising – and some of the striking deals reflect that. Asos is offering up to 70% off, while its rival Boohoo is slashing prices by up to 90%.

With Covid curbs creating pent-up demand, there is some good news for struggling retailers, with eight in 10 shoppers planning to make a Black Friday purchase, according to the personal finance website money.co.uk.

A late addition to the pack: Germany’s Dax has opened flat

As expected, European indexes have tumbled into the red at the open:

• FTSE 100 is down 0.45%
• FTSE 250 is down 0.08%
• France’s CAC 40 is down 0.1%
• Spain’s IBEX is down 0.4%