Morning Press Round-Up
Below are the key morning headlines from today’s papers, featuring the Financial Times, The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail & more - see the full Press section here.
Shares on Wall Street tanked last night as some of America’s biggest tech companies took a hammering from investors. Apple fell nearly 4% – taking losses since its October peak to over 20% – following reports that the company has cut production orders for the iPhones unveiled earlier this year. Facebook followed suit, falling more than 5%. The social media titan’s shares have dropped 14% over the past month. Tech shares more broadly slid amid allegations from Chinese authorities that some of the world’s top computer chip-makers were engaging in anti-competitive behaviour. Even Amazon shed more than 5% ahead of Black Friday and the Christmas shopping period.
Pension Protection Fund raises concerns over Johnston Press collapse. The decision to put the newspaper publisher into administration two days before it was due to make a monthly top-up payment into its underfunded defined benefit pension scheme faces scrutiny from regulators. The Pension Protection Fund (PPF), the lifeboat that is due to assume responsibility for the scheme following the collapse and pre-packaged sale of Johnston Press to lenders on Saturday, said it had “concerns” about the process and was in talks with the pensions watchdog. The Johnston Press board, led by chairman Camilla Rhodes, met on Friday evening following the end of a formal sale process launched in October.
Satellite deal cements UK space industry success. European aerospace giants Airbus and Eutelsat will sink millions into building satellite parts in Britain in a major vote of confidence for the booming space industry. The companies have struck a deal to manufacture and assemble components for two new satellites in the UK, securing investment of up to €40m (£36m) per year. Airbus’s plants in Portsmouth and Stevenage will build the parts for Eutelsat before they are sent to Toulouse for final assembly. Eutelsat chief executive Rodolphe Belmer shrugged off concerns that a no-deal Brexit would paralyse the manufacturing sector, saying that “the British space industry will remain one of the front-runners in Europe”.
BHP Billiton pays out £300m to settle Australian tax dispute. The world’s biggest mining company has agreed to pay about £300 million to solve a long-running dispute with Australia’s tax authorities. said that it had made “no admission of tax avoidance” as part of the settlement over its Singapore-based marketing business, but had agreed to changes that would result in it paying an increased rate from now on. The Australian Taxation Office, which originally had sought more than A$1 billion, said that the “landmark” settlement of A$529 million set a precedent for the industry and meant that all profits from BHP’s sale of Australian commodities would now be taxed in that country.
Nestlé shrugs off speculation and stays sweet on its British brands. The chief executive of Nestlé has reaffirmed the company’s commitment to its British confectionery business, only months before Britain is to exit the European Union. Mark Schneider, who took charge in January last year, said that the food manufacturing group’s UK business, which includes Rowntree’s, was performing extremely well in a challenging market. “I have been very impressed with how the UK management team has been performing under difficult conditions, and that is in part driven by certain categories, with one good example being our confectionery category,” he said.
George Soros places £20m bet against Aston Martin. Billionaire financier George Soros has placed a £20m bet that the share price of will struggle to recover following its atrocious stock market debut. Mr Soros, the legendary Hungarian-American investor who “broke the Bank of England”, has shorted the James Bond carmaker’s shares after they shed a quarter of their value. Short-sellers have rushed to bet against the company as 2018’s most hotly anticipated initial public offering in London. Over 12% of Aston Martin’s shares are in the hands of short-sellers looking to profit from a share price plunge, according to S3 Partners data.
slips down a few rungs. Shares in a social housing and property maintenance contractor fell by almost 9% yesterday after it announced a discounted placing to fund the purchase of Mitie’s social housing business. Mears Group raised £22.5 million from a placing of 6.8 million shares priced at 331½p a share — a 9.9% discount to Friday’s closing price. It will be used to buy assets and contracts from the property management division of Mitie, the outsourcing group. A further £12.5 million will be paid subject to conditions linked with earnings in the two years after completion. The division, which provides repairs and maintenance services to social housing providers, has been loss-making in the past 18 months. Mears said that it was working on a turnaround plan. said that proceeds from the sale would be used to reinvest in its main businesses, strengthen its balance sheet and accelerate repayment of a pension scheme deficit. Analysts at Liberum said: “We have little doubt the business will be worth more in Mears’ hands than Mitie’s.”
Babcock is battling to calm investors’ fears about its finances following a dramatic slump in the share price. The defence contractor, which maintains submarines carrying Britain’s nuclear deterrent, has seen its value more than halve in the past five years, leaving it valued at around £3 billion. The stock is down more than 30% since June. has been forced to speak out about the health of its finances, insisting a shake-up of its businesses would not result in ‘material’ cash costs when it reports results tomorrow. Sky News claimed the firm was preparing to unveil a £100m fall in the value of Avincis, the helicopter business Babcock bought in 2014 for £1.6 billion.
Among the smaller companies on the London Stock Exchange, graphene businesses had a strong day. , which is looking to incorporate its Nanene version of graphene into clothes, wound dressings and aeroplane components, shot up 6.1%, or 7.5p, to 130p as it signed an agreement with a Chinese company to partner on building a manufacturing centre in China. Its smaller rival, , soared 36.7%, or 5.5p, to 20.5p as it signed a contract with Thai banknote printer TKS Siampress
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