Canada's OpenText to buy Micro Focus in £5.1bn deal; JTC to buy NYPTC

London pre-open

The FTSE 100 was called to open 23 points higher at 7,502.

Stocks to watch

Software maker Micro Focus said it had agreed a £5.1bn takeover by Canadian rival OpenText.

The offering is £5.32 per share, a 98% premium on Micro Focus’s current share price, which has fallen 87% over the past three years.

JTC said it has agreed to buy New York Private Trust Company (NYPTC), a non-deposit trust company headquartered in Delaware in the US, for an undisclosed sum.

NYPTC offers a broad range of fiduciary services, including trust services, estate administration services and white label trust services to high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals and families and corporate clients.

Newspaper round-up

Elon Musk may get access to Twitter data used in a 2021 audit of active users but other information the billionaire seeks in a bid to end his $44bn deal to buy the company were rejected as “absurdly broad”, a judge said on Thursday. Twitter must turn over data from the 9,000 accounts sampled in the fourth quarter as part of its process to estimate the number of spam accounts. – Guardian

British households were on average £160 worse off in July than a year earlier, according to research by the supermarket Asda, as it said it would do more to help shoppers being squeezed by soaring food and energy costs. Asda bosses said they would keep “grocery bills in check” and do all they could to support customers “during these tough times”, as they monitor how much money consumers have to spend through their income tracker. – Guardian

The new Prime Minister is set to announce help for households with their energy bills within days of taking office, the public will be assured on Friday, as the price cap almost doubles to more than £3,500. Nadhim Zahawi, the Chancellor, is expected to say that measures will be announced "as soon as possible" after the winner of the Tory leadership contest is announced on September 5. – Telegraph

Marks & Spencer has been dragged back into a row over its decision to allow shoppers to choose whether to use the men's or women's changing rooms. Critics have warned the policy could be exploited and accused the retailer of introducing unisex changing rooms by "stealth". – Telegraph

The doubling of mortgage rates means that first-time buyers need an extra £12,250 to buy a home compared with last year. Sharply rising borrowing costs have sent short-term mortgage rates above 4 per cent for the first time in nearly a decade, hitting first-time buyers and those on lower incomes the hardest, according to Zoopla, the property website. – The Times

US Close

Wall Street indices closed in the green on Friday, after a top Federal Reserve official hinted at a possible pause in rate hikes towards the end of the year, and ahead of Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech on Friday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the session up 0.98% at 33,291.78, as the S&P 500 added 1.41% to 4,199.12, and the Nasdaq Composite was ahead 1.67% at 12,639.27.