Pearson sells Courseware businesses, Biffa gets takeover approach

London open

The FTSE 100 was called to open 23 points lower at 7,585.

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Waste management specialist Biffa said it has given the green light to a proposed £1bn takeover approach.

The FTSE 250 company said it had received series of unsolicited, indicative proposals from affiliates of Energy Capital Partners, and following talks, a possible offer price of 445p per share has been proposed.

Due diligence is now underway, and Biffa said it was “minded to recommend” the offer to shareholders should a firm offer be made.

Education publisher Pearson said it had sold its local K12 Courseware businesses in Italy and Germany to Sanoma Corporation for £163m.

Under the terms of the deal, Pearson will also enter into an agreement with Sanoma for it to distribute Pearson's English Language Teaching products in Italy, the company said.

Newspaper round-up

Concerns have been raised over the City’s influence on Westminster, after a report found financial firms and individuals tied to the sector donated £15m to political parties and gave £2m to MPs during the pandemic. The campaign group Positive Money tallied the gifts, expenses and donations handed to MPs, peers and their parties, as well as the value of income from politicians’ second jobs, saying it contributed to finance’s “oversized influence” on policymaking. – Guardian

Apple is taking on Klarna and ClearPay with a new “buy now, pay later” feature for iPhones, the company has announced at its worldwide developer conference. The company is also redesigning the iPhone’s lock screen, in the most substantial visual redesign the operating system for iPhones has received since the introduction of the iPhone X, and introducing a new version of the MacBook Air built around its M2 chip. – Guardian

A shared office space company founded by former Downing Street adviser Rohan Silva is on the hunt for a buyer amid uncertainty over its future. Second Home, which was co-founded by the ex-aide to David Cameron, is understood to have kicked off an accelerated sales process as a "plan B" option if it is unable to close an emergency cash injection. The process at the company was first reported by City AM, and comes weeks after it began work to raise £6m in emergency cash to stave off a collapse. At the time, Sky News reported that Second Home had hired FRP Advisory, the restructuring and insolvency firm. – Telegraph

UK public companies are trading at a valuation discount totalling about £500 billion since the “scarring impact” of the Brexit vote six years ago, according to research by a City stockbroker. Since 2016, when Britain voted to leave the European Union, the valuation of companies on the FTSE all-share index has settled at a 20 per cent discount to the rest of the world, on an adjusted basis, Panmure Gordon found. It is the largest divergence since the early 1990s. – The Times

US close

US stocks were still above the waterline by the closing bell on Monday, though they had trimmed some of their earlier gains, as Didi rocketed ahead after reports that regulators in Beijing were close to concluding a probe into the ride-hailing app, and allow it to restore service domestically.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.05% at 32,915.78, as the S&P 500 added 0.31% to 4,121.43 and the Nasdaq Composite was ahead 0.4% at 12,061.37.