Below are the key morning press headlines, featuring the The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail & more - see the full Press section here.
Despairing investors in Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) are in danger of incurring even bigger losses if they hang on to their shares, analysts warned yesterday. On the first day of trading since Neil Woodford resigned as fund manager, shares fell as much as 12% to a record low of just below 30p. They closed at 32.5p, having been worth around 119p in August 2015. But JP Morgan analysts have warned that those desperate to avoid crystallising their losses may get even less back in future. The trust’s board is looking at whether it should appoint a new manager, sell it to another fund management company or wind it down and sell the assets. JP Morgan said that all scenarios will bring risk. Shares have been trading at a huge 50% discount to the estimated value of the assets as investors have shunned it. Yesterday, JP Morgan said: ‘This already includes some hefty writedowns, but it is inevitable that there will be more. We just don’t know how much and when.’It added: ‘An orderly wind-up is the best way forward.’
The competition watchdog has formally launched an investigation into Amazon’s investment in food delivery firm Deliveroo. It follows a multi-million pound deal, part of a £460million fundraising round, which saw the internet retailer attempt to buy a minority stake in the British company. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has suggested this could lead to a full takeover of Deliveroo. It has ordered the companies to temporarily halt the process until its inquiries into the deal are complete. The CMA probe could lead to a more detailed ‘phase 2’ investigation – and possibly prompt it to block the investment.
Metro Bank (MTRO) is under pressure from the Bank of England to hire an industry veteran as its next chairman, as the troubled lender braces for another set of gloomy financial results. The lender is understood to be facing demands to hire an experienced insider in place of Metro founder Vernon Hill, who is stepping down as chairman following a disastrous year in which a major accounting gaffe left investors nursing huge losses. In a sign of their concerns about how Metro has been run up to now, Bank of England regulators are taking a keen interest in who gets the job.
The chairman and founder of Berkeley Group Holdings (The) (BKG) has banked almost £80 million in the past three months after selling shares in the housebuilder. Tony Pidgley, 72, sold a million shares in the company for £42 million this week, on top of the million shares he sold for £37.2 million in July. The latest sale reduced his stake in the business by a quarter. He now holds a 2.1% stake that was worth more than £120 million at last night’s share price close of £44.54. Mr Pidgley’s share sale comes amid increased scrutiny of executive pay in the housebuilding sector. At Berkeley’s annual meeting last month, 43% of voting investors opposed the directors’ pay policy.
Shares in ASOS (ASC) rose by more than a quarter yesterday after investors bet that the online retailer had turned a corner, despite profits falling by 68% on the back of problems at its international warehouses. Marcus Morris-Eyton, a portfolio manager at Allianz, which is Asos’s fifth largest shareholder, said that it was “probably too early to call a complete turnaround” but that there was now “ample room” for the retailer to grow profit margins after resolving the issues with its warehouses and strengthening the management team. Nick Beighton, the chief executive, admitted that Asos had “taken its eye off the ball” because its internal operations had not kept up with its international growth. Overhauling two overseas warehouses simultaneously had thrown up too many challenges. “We were not adequately prepared for the additional complexities of planning and trading across our expanded warehouse footprint,” Mr Beighton said.
Barratt Developments (BDEV) reported a resilient sales rate for the first 15 weeks of the new financial year, but the value of the homes it sells has dipped. The company said that it had a forward order book of 12,963 homes, slightly up on the 12,903 it had on its books this time last year. The average price agreed for the homes it is due to build has fallen to £236,800 from about £243,900 last October. Lower average selling prices have been driven in part by Barratt’s decision to move out of the central London market. The housebuilder’s weekly average private sales per site for the 15 weeks to October 13 was flat year-on-year at 0.72. It reiterated that it expected sales volumes to grow towards the lower end of its medium-term annual target range of 3% to 5%.
National Express Group (NEX) has signed a €1 billion bus contract in Casablanca that will give it more buses in Morocco than in Britain. Alsa, the transport operator’s Spanish and Moroccan division, said that it would provide about 700 buses and a new payment system and scheduling in the country’s largest city and economic capital. The company started operations in Morocco in 1999 with a contract to manage the urban transport system in Marrakesh. The Alsa contract will last for ten years, with the potential to extend to 15, and nearly doubles National Express’s presence in Morocco. The group will run 400 buses in Casablanca next month, with an additional 300 next year, carrying 100 million passengers annually.
Claims of sexual harassment by a star fund manager at M&G Investments and suggestions that the company tolerates a culture of drink-fuelled abuse against female staff have threatened to overshadow its £8 billion flotation next week. One of the investment group’s top money managers is alleged to have harassed younger women over several years, according to Bloomberg. The allegations surfaced just days before Prudential (PRU) is due to spin off M&G as a separately listed company with almost certain membership of the FTSE 100. M&G manages £334 billion of funds for retail investors and institutions as well as operating Prudential’s UK insurance operations.