The £5 billion bidding battle for Just Eat (JE.) 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.
Tullow Oil (TLW) 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.
A net £30.8 million was withdrawn from one of Britain’s biggest property funds last Friday after the gating of a rival fund. Morningstar, an information group that monitors fund flows, said that the money had been pulled from the Aberdeen UK Property fund and that it had come after a net outflow of £31.6 million on Wednesday, but one of only £480,000 on Thursday. The fund, managed by Standard Life Aberdeen (SLA), is among several seen as being vulnerable to redemptions after M&G suspended trading in its £2.5 billion Property Portfolio fund. Some investors, institutional and retail, are said to be scrambling to pull out their money, fearing that it could be locked in funds for months.
The potential sale of Tesco (TSCO) multibillion-pound Asia business could lead to a bumper payout for investors, prompting shares in the retailer to rally. The supermarket chain confirmed yesterday it is considering a disposal of its retail operations in Thailand and Malaysia as part of a review of its business in the region after “inbound interest” from prospective buyers. The business is valued at about £6.8 billion. Analysts at Bernstein said that a deal could result in a special dividend or share buyback, while Shore Capital’s team said that they expected any deal “to involve substantial sums, which could result in a material distribution to shareholders”. Analysts at Jefferies said: “With no obvious internal competing uses for this capital, shareholders should reasonably expect very sizeable exceptional distributions.”
A further exodus of senior figures is looming at HSBC Holdings (HSBA) as the bank strives to overhaul its business and boost profits. Marc Moses, its chief risk officer, will leave in January while Andy Maguire, the lender’s chief operating officer, is also going and Samir Assaf, head of the investment bank, is taking on a different role. The moves come after the dismissal in August of John Flint, 51, as chief executive by Mark Tucker, who became the first outsider to hold the chairman’s role at HSBC in October 2017. Mr Tucker has overseen sweeping changes to the bank’s senior management in Britain and its trouble-hit American business.
Senior (SNR), a British-based supplier of components to Boeing, Airbus and Rolls-Royce could be sold off. Senior, a quoted precision engineer, has indicated that it is willing to listen to offers for its aerostructures business in a deal that analysts said could raise £450 million. The news follows the sale of Cobham, another British aerospace group, to an American private equity firm. The news helped the shares to pull up from the near-eight-year lows at which they have been trading, closing up 12½p at 190½p.
The founder of Amigo Holdings (AMGO) has staged a boardroom coup that prompted the sudden resignations of its chairman and chief executive, plunging Britain’s biggest guarantor lender into turmoil. Hamish Paton, who became chief executive in July, stepped down yesterday and Stephan Wilcke, the chairman, will go at the annual shareholder meeting next year. Amigo said that a third director, Clare Salmon, who chairs the board’s remuneration committee, also would leave “at the first suitable opportunity”. The exodus came as James Benamor, Amigo’s founder and controlling shareholder, appointed himself and Kelly Black, one of his lieutenants, to the board as non-executive directors. It marks Mr Benamor’s return to Amigo after standing down as a non-executive in September last year, three months after the lender’s flotation.
Provident Financial (PFG) has turned to the chief financial officer of Secure Trust, the specialist lender, to fill the same role on its board. Neeraj Kapur, 53, will take the job at the doorstep lender in April from Simon Thomas, who is leaving Provident for health reasons. Mr Kapur has been at Secure Trust for eight years and previously worked at Royal Bank of Scotland. His appointment was seen as a boost for Provident in its ambitions to go through the complex process of being allowed by the regulator to use its internal model to assess risk, which could save it money. He also will help to bolster the senior team of Provident, which fought off a hostile takeover bid from Non-Standard Finance, a rival, in June and is striving to move past regulatory investigations into its previous practices.
Goldman Sachs thinks that investors should buy shares in Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) — 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.
Colombia’s richest men has become the biggest investor in Metro Bank (MTRO). Jaime Gilinski Bacal, a banking tycoon acting through Spaldy Investments, now controls 6.1% of Metro shares, making him the largest shareholder. The shares dropped 4¾p to 177½p.
