Oxford Instruments buys Germant's WITec, Apax funds acquiring majority of CyberGrants
London open
The FTSE 100 is expected to open 14 points higher on Wednesday, having closed up 0.36% on Tuesday at 7,172.48.
Stocks to watch
Oxford Instruments said it had bought Germany’s Wissenschaftliche Instrumente und Technologie (WITec) for up to €42m. WITec is a Raman microscopy imaging provider based in Ulm. The deal is on a debt-free basis with €5m of the purchase price conditional on trading performance over a period of 12 months following completion.
Apax Global Alpha said on Wednesday that the Apax X fund, in which it is a limited partner, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a majority ownership stake in CyberGrants. The FTSE 250 company said CyberGrants provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) products for corporate social responsibility (CSR), employee engagement, and volunteer management. It said the transaction was expected to close in the third quarter, adding that on a look-through basis, it was expecting to invest up to $13.9m in the company, depending on final closing arrangements.
Newspaper round-up
Less than half of the 260 smaller companies listed on the London Stock Exchange’s main index have met the target of having a third of their board roles occupied by women, and more than half still have all-male executive leadership teams. The campaign group Women on Boards UK has analysed all firms below the FTSE 350 All-Share index, and identified what it calls a “permafrost” of smaller businesses below the top layer that have been slow in taking steps to diversify. - Guardian
The chief executive of Morgan Stanley has become the latest US banking boss to call for an end to remote working, telling his New York staff that anyone who feels safe going out to a restaurant should return to the office. James Gorman admitted that the bank would take a different approach in countries such as India or the UK – where fewer than 25% of its 5,000 London staff have been going to work in person – due to stricter Covid restrictions. - Guardian
Rail chiefs have warned steep cuts to services will be required to balance the books with passenger demand set to take years to recover to pre-pandemic levels. Bosses formally fired the starting gun on a slew of cuts across the industry to reduce the £800m-a-month subsidy from taxpayers. - Telegraph
Savers pulled £806 million out of a property fund that had been closed for almost 17 months when it reopened for business. Outflows from the M&G Property Portfolio Fund last month equated to 40 per cent of its assets, according to Morningstar, the data provider. It means that the fund has shrunk from £2 billion to £1.2 billion. - The Times
Rishi Sunak could be forced to spend up to £4 billion more on pensioners from next year if he sticks to the Conservative Party’s “triple lock” pledge. The potential for extra pension funding was part of the latest jobs data from the Office for National Statistics, which said that average weekly pay, excluding bonuses, had risen by 5.6 per cent year-on-year in the three months from February to April 2021. - The Times
US close
A weaker-than-expected reading on the key monthly retail sales report alongside faster growth in producer prices knocked stocks lower by the close on Wall Street on Tuesday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.27% at 34,299.33, while the S&P 500 lost 0.2% to 4,246.59 and the Nasdaq Composite was off 0.71% at 14,072.86.
Fresh data released earlier showed industrial production in the United States rose 0.8% in May, just above the consensus for 0.7%.
Pantheon Macroeconomics chief economist Ian Shepherdson noted that headline production was lifted by a rebound in mining extraction, up 1.1%, while manufacturing output rose a “solid” 0.8%.
“Within the manufacturing sector, a hefty 6.7% rebound in vehicle production more than reversed the 5.6% April drop, suggesting that production has settled at a level consistent with the availability of chips.