Judges Scientific buys Rockwash Geodata, Quanex makes final offer for Tyman

Stocks to watch

Scientific instruments group Judges Scientific has spent £2.25m on the purchase of Wales-based Rockwash Geodata, a specialist in rock cuttings and chippings digitalisation. The company said Rockwash is a market leader in its niche and has a business that is “strongly synergistic” with the core digitalisation activities of its subsidiary Geotek.

Quanex Building Products announced an increased and final recommended cash and share offer for Tyman on Friday. It said that after feedback from Tyman shareholders, the revised proposal included a special interim dividend of 15p per share in addition to the previous consideration of 240p and 0.05715 of a new Quanex share per Tyman share. The Tyman board had unanimously recommended the revised offer, and secured an irrevocable undertaking from Alantra EQMC Asset Management to support the scheme, representing 10.05% of its issued share capital.

Newspaper round-up

Tata Steel has told workers it could cease operations at its steel plant in Port Talbot months earlier than planned because of a strike. The company had been planning to shut down one of the blast furnaces by the end of June and the second one by September. But workers at the south Wales site have been told that Tata plans to cease operations at both furnaces no later than 7 July because of the strike by members of Unite, which starts the following day. – Guardian

Tesla is claiming Elon Musk won his legal battle over his $56bn pay package because shareholders voted for the compensation, despite a judge rescinding it earlier this year, according to court filing made public on Friday. The company’s filing comes two weeks after Tesla shareholders voted to ratify the 2018 package of stock options. Tesla held the vote following a January ruling by a Delaware judge to void the compensation because Musk improperly controlled the negotiation process and the company misled shareholders about key details. – Guardian

The struggling US owner of Boots has shelved plans for a multibillion-pound sale for the second time, leaving the high street chemist at risk of a further squeeze on investment in its stores. Walgreens, which has owned Boots since 2014, abandoned plans to cash in as it revealed a damaging profit warning on Wednesday. The trading update, which also announced plans to close a large number of stores, saw its share price fall to its lowest level since 1997. – Telegraph

The next government can unlock £100 billion of investment by providing a more stable policy environment and an approach to regulation that encourages a “degree of risk-taking”, according to Dame Amanda Blanc. The chief executive of Aviva, the insurance group, said that businesses were ready to spend if the next administration provided “the right environment with the right incentives and, more than anything, the stability in public policy to allow us to invest the capital we manage on behalf of millions of others”. – The Times

Amazon faces a £2.7 billion legal action for “anticompetitive conduct” over claims that the technology group discriminates in favour of its own retail offers. The claim was issued on Thursday by Andreas Stephan, a law academic, on behalf of more than 200,000 British third-party sellers on Amazon. – The Times

US close

US stocks closed with minor gains on Thursday with investors showing caution amid a barrage of mixed economic data ahead of Friday's key PCE inflation report.

The Dow and S&P 500 both finished up just 0.09% while the Nasdaq gained 0.30%, with the latter two indices inching closer to last week's record highs.

Eyes were turning to Friday's release of the US core personal consumption expenditures index – the Federal Reserve's preferred gauge of inflation – which is expected to show that the annual rate of core PCE inflation eased to 2.6% in May from 2.8% the month before.

Initial jobless claims fell to 233,000 in the week ended 21 June, down from 239,000 the week before, coming in below the consensus forecast of 235,000.

Claims declined for the second week after hitting a 10-month high of 243,000 in the first week of June.