The telecoms billionaire Patrick Drahi has increased his stake in BT to 18 per cent, but reiterated that he has no intention of bidding for the company.
Drahi, the billionaire founder of Altice, the French telecoms group, and the owner of Sotheby’s, surprised the industry in June when he emerged with a 12.1 per cent stake in BT.
In a brief statement to the stock exchange Drahi said he had engaged constructively with the board and management of BT in recent months and looked forward to continuing that dialogue. “We continue to hold them in high regard and remain fully supportive of their strategy, principally to play the pivotal role in delivering the expansion of access to a full fibre broadband network; an investment programme which is so important to both BT and to the UK,” he said.
Under takeover panel rules the wording of the stock exchange statement bars Drahi from bidding for BT for six months — without the agreement of BT or a rival bid being tabled.
Shares in Ocado will be in sharp focus this morning after the FTSE 100 group announced late last night that it had won the first round of a US patent infringement lawsuit filed by AutoStore Holdings, a Norwegian robotics company.
Advertisement
Autostore had claimed that Ocado’s warehouse technology, which it had sold to retailers around the world, had infringed its intellectual property. The complaint prompted an investigation by the US International Trade Commission, an independent quasi-judicial agency. An initial determination, issued last night, concluded there was “no violation”.
More than £2 billion was wiped off the value of Ocado when AutoStore began its legal action last year. AutoStore said it planned to challenge the decision before the full commission, which will review the findings and issue a final verdict in April.
We have had a scheduled trading update this morning from Ocado’s UK retail business, which is jointly owned by Ocado and Marks & Spencer. Revenue in the 13 weeks to November 28 fell by 3.9 per cent to £547.8 million compared with the same period last year as a result of labour shortages and a reduction in capacity at its Erith warehouse. The average basket size, a crucial metric for online retailers, fell 12 per cent to £118. Average weekly orders rose by 8.5 per per cent to 375,100.
Melanie Smith, Ocado Retail’s chief executive, said: “The investments we have made over the past year mean we have significant capacity for growth in 2022.”
Elsewhere on the corporate front this morning
Advertisement
• Rentokil has tabled an agreed $6.7 billion bid for US rival Terminix. The deal implies a value of $55 per Terminix share, representing a 47% premium to Terminix’s closing price on Monday. Richard Solomons, chairman of Rentokil, said: “This transformational combination will create the global leader in pest control and hygiene.”
• HSBC has set out its policy to phase out the financing of coal-fired power and thermal coal mining by 2030 in the EU and OECD markets, and worldwide by 2040. The bank said it expected all its clients to have a plan in place to exit the fossil fuel by the end of 2023.
• Others updating this morning include Chemring Group, the defence group, and RWS, which provides legal and patent translation services for businesses.
Employers added 275,000 staff to their payrolls in November, taking the total number of payroll employers to 29.4 million, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The official data, released this morning, appears to provide further evidence of the strength of the jobs market since the government’s furlough scheme ended.
Advertisement
• Headline unemployment slipped to 4.2 per cent in the three months to the end of October, down from 4.3 per cent.
• Average weekly earnings rose by a larger than expected 4.9 per cent year on year in the three months from August to October. City analysts had forecast growth of 4.6 per cent.
• The number of job vacancies rose to a new record of 1.2 million in November.
Darren Morgan, ONS director of economic statistics, said: “With still no sign of the end of the furlough scheme hitting the number of jobs … the number on payroll is now above pre-pandemic levels right across the country.”
I’ll be on Times Radio just after 4.30pm today to talk through the day’s market action. Listen online, on DAB radio, your smart speaker or via the Times Radio app.