Morning Financial Press Review 10/12/19
Below are the key morning press headlines, featuring the The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail & more - see the full Press section here.
The £5 billion bidding battle for is heading for a Christmas showdown, with both suitors under mounting pressure to sweeten the terms of their competing offers for the food delivery group. Takeaway.com, the Dutch peer tabling a recommended all-paper bid, is facing calls to give Just Eat shareholders as much as 58% of the enlarged share capital, up from the present 52%, while Naspers is tipped to have to lift its cash offer to at least 800p. The South African technology group, bidding via its Dutch subsidiary Prosus, finally bowed to the inevitable yesterday by raising its cash offer from 710p a share to 740p. However, it failed to land a knockout blow, as some of the British group’s biggest shareholders immediately rejected the £5.1 billion offer.
has launched a major overhaul of its top team as interim boss Noel Quinn tries to stamp his mark on the lender. Longstanding investment banking head Samir Assaf – who once described himself as the “last man standing” during a previous exodus – is moving on, and the bank is also replacing its chief operating and risk officers. The changes have emerged months after Mr Quinn blasted the lender’s performance as “not acceptable” following an 18% fall in third-quarter profits compared to 2018. Only $100m (£76m) of the lender’s $4.8bn profit was generated outside Asia, piling pressure on divisions to up their game in Europe and the US.
shares plummeted by more than two thirds yesterday after the company axed its chief executive, cut production guidance and suspended its dividend. Tullow said that Paul McDade, its chief executive, and Angus McCoss, the exploration director, had resigned by “mutual agreement and with immediate effect”. Dorothy Thompson, the company’s chairwoman, said that the board were disappointed with the performance of the oil producer and were responding with “decisive action”. Mrs Thompson, 59, will become Tullow’s executive chairwoman on a temporary basis in the wake of the departures of Mr McDade, 56, who has been with the company since 2001 and has been its chief executive since 2017, and Mr McCoss, 58.
will find out today if it has been removed from a leading ethical stock market index after it was blacklisted by Norway’s state investment fund over human rights concerns. The security services group has been included on the FTSE 4 Good index for the past three years. The index puts an ethical stamp on companies that are environmentally and socially responsible. But campaigners have called for G4S to be booted out after Norway’s pension fund said it would no longer invest in the firm over concerns it contributed to human rights abuses in its Middle East operations.
Colombian billionaire Jaime Gilinski Bacal has become the biggest investor in – fuelling speculation of a possible takeover bid. The tycoon first emerged as a Metro investor in late November and is now its biggest shareholder with a 6.1% stake, replacing hedge fund chief Steve Cohen who has been selling down his holding. His pole position on the shareholder register has raised eyebrows among analysts. It comes as Metro Bank’s founder and chairman Vernon Hill and chief executive Craig Donaldson prepare to quit the lender’s board, following an accounting error which has sent shares plummeting 96% from their peak in 2018.
soared 12.4p, to 190.4p after it confirmed media reports that it is mulling the sale of its aerostructures business, which is the company’s largest division and makes aeroplane parts. It told the stock market it has been ‘reviewing all strategic options’ for the aerostructures arm – but stressed it is at an early stage and that a sale might not happen. The news has not been a surprise for many in the City, which comes a month after Senior kicked off a £20million restructuring programme to combat the business’s weak performance.
Goldman Sachs thinks that investors should buy shares in — a notable U-turn for the investment bank from the gloomy “sell” recommendation that it has held on the retailer for much of the recent past. That has proven to be sound advice. However, Richard Edwards and his team at Goldman believe that the tide has turned, citing an improvement in customers’ opinion of the womenswear collection over the past six months. This has helped to stabilise the number of people shopping at M&S and has led to customers spending more money on each visit. Given the “more positive consumer feedback” and the assumption that M&S didn’t slash prices over Black Friday, as some of its peers did, Goldman’s analysts now estimate that like-for-like sales in the second half will be down by only 0.5% compared with last year, having previously predicted a 2% fall. The fabled double upgrade — from “sell” to “buy” — lifted M&S shares by 7p to 208¼p, although Goldman thinks they are worth closer to 220p.
British science is to be handed a major boost from a US property developer preparing to plough up to $500m (£380m) into building new laboratories across the country. San Diego-based real estate firm Creative Science Properties has teamed up with estate agent to scout out locations in Cambridge, Oxford and London where new labs could be built. Rob Sadler, from Savills, said there is growing demand for extra space from the UK’s world-class pharmaceutical companies, sparking a flurry of interest from international investors. He said the cheap pound has also made the country an attractive proposition at the moment.
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