Endeavour pours first gold at Lafigue, Capita renews Royal Mail pension scheme contract

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 40 points lower on Tuesday, having closed up 0.03% on Monday at 8,166.76.

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Endeavour Mining announced its first gold pour at the Lafigué mine in Côte d’Ivoire on Tuesday, completing the project on budget and ahead of schedule 21 months after construction started. The FTSE 250 company said the mine was expected to reach commercial production and ramp up to a plant capacity of four million tonnes per annum by the third quarter, with initial production estimated between 90,000 and 110,000 ounces of gold in 2024, increasing to 200,000 ounces in 2025. It was the fifth successful project Endeavour had built in West Africa in the last decade.

Capita has renewed its contract with the Cabinet Office to administer the Royal Mail Statutory Pension Scheme (RMSPS) for six years starting in 2026, it announced on Tuesday, with a potential two-year extension. The £48m deal would see Capita continue to serve over 350,000 RMSPS members while migrating services to a single platform using Microsoft Dynamics and other technologies. Capita had been administering the RMSPS since 2017, providing services such as finance, accounting, pension payroll, and data management.

Newspaper round-up

Britain’s next government is poised to benefit from easing pressure on household finances after a slowdown in inflation in stores and a fall in fuel prices, but costs remain “too expensive” for many families. Figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) show that annual UK shop price inflation cooled last month to 0.2%, down from 0.6% in May – the slowest pace since October 2021 – as retailers cut the prices of many of their key products, including butter and coffee. – Guardian

Thames Water has been urged to show greater transparency over its finances and accused of “financial chicanery” after it emerged its board had approved a £150m dividend hours before its shareholders U-turned on providing emergency funding. The Guardian revealed last week that the board of the struggling water supplier agreed to the payout at a meeting on 27 March. – Guardian

A husband and wife duo who built an outdoor theatre on the grounds of their Suffolk farm estate have been catapulted into Britain’s rich list after netting £2bn from the sale of their financial data business. Mark and Lindy O’Hare, who own a Grade-II listed farmhouse and 350-seat theatre, have struck a deal to sell their data group Preqin to fund giant BlackRock for £2.5bn. – Telegraph

The future of a major British aerospace plant is in doubt with up to 2,400 jobs at risk following a carve-up of owner Spirit AeroSystems between Boeing and Airbus. A chunk of Spirit’s operations at the facility in Belfast have been left without an owner, putting the long-term future of the entire factory in danger. Boeing is to buy Kansas-based Spirit for $4.7bn (£3.7bn) in order to gain control of a key supplier to its troubled 737 Max jet, while offloading operations that provide components for Airbus to its European rival. This means Airbus will be taking control of a part of the Belfast factory that oversees wing and fuselage production for the Airbus A220 regional jet. – Telegraph

Randox plunged from Covid-era annual profits of £190 million to a loss of £40 million in 2023. The Northern Ireland-based health diagnostics firm, which sponsors the Grand National, said the losses had been expected as it had needed to restructure its operations after the pandemic. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks closed higher on Monday after the second half of the trading year initially got off to a mixed start, with both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite later recovering from earlier losses.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.13% at 39,169.52, while the S&P 500 advanced 0.27% to 5,475.09 and the Nasdaq Composite came out the gate 0.83% firmer at 17,879.30.

The Dow closed 50.66 points higher on Monday, reversing losses recorded in the previous session.

On the macro slate for Monday, S&P Global's June manufacturing PMI was revised slightly lower on Monday, dropping from a preliminary reading of 51.7 to 51.6, but remained the highest reading seen in three months.

Elsewhere, last month's Institute for Supply Management manufacturing PMI unexpectedly dropped to 48.5, down from 48.7 in May, short of expectations for a reading of 49.1, and marking a third-straight monthly decline.