Brookfield beats Segro in bid for Tritax EuroBox, Volution reports full-year growth

Stocks to watch

Canadian investment firm Brookfield has trumped Segro’s effort to buy warehouse owner Tritax Eurobox with an agreed £557m offer. Brookfield is offering 69p a share, a 6% uplift on Segro’s offer of 65.1p.

Volution Group reported a 6% increase in full-year revenue on Thursday, to £347.6m, with 1.5% organic growth offset by a 2% foreign exchange impact. The FTSE 250 company said its adjusted operating profit margin rose to 22.5%, driven by strong UK residential demand and operational improvements, while adjusted basic earnings per share increased 8.5% to 28p. It maintained a high return on capital and announced a 12.5% dividend increase to 9p per share, as it completed key acquisitions including DVS in New Zealand and an agreement to acquire Fantech in Australasia.

Newspaper round-up

Rogue employers will be targeted by a beefed-up new enforcement agency to protect sweeping changes to rights at work for millions of Britons, set to be outlined in a “watershed” bill published on Friday. The Fair Work Agency will be created as part of the government’s employment rights legislation, which will include stronger protections against unfair dismissal and exploitative contracts. – Guardian

Keir Starmer’s promise to end austerity and rebuild public services will require tax increases of £25bn a year in the coming budget even if debt rules are changed to provide scope for extra investment spending, a leading thinktank has said. In its preview of the first Labour budget in 14 years, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said Rachel Reeves would need to raise taxes to fresh record levels to meet the government’s policy goals. The chancellor was also warned of the risk of a Liz Truss-style meltdown if the City responded badly to substantially higher borrowing. – Guardian

An extra 9m staff will be granted powers to sue their employers under sweeping plans by Angela Rayner to overhaul workers’ rights. Under the Deputy Prime Minister’s shake-up, workers will have the right to take companies to court for unfair dismissal from the first day of their employment. Currently, people must be employed for at least two years before they qualify for these powers.Ms Rayner said the changes would benefit 9m people that have been with their employer for less than two years. – Telegraph

Britain’s productivity record over the past two decades has been “dire”, seriously lagging both the United States and Europe, according to a new analysis in the latest assessment of the chancellor’s fiscal options. Growth in output per UK worker has slowed to the lowest pace since at least 1850, the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, according to Citi, in research published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies as part of its annual green budget. – The Times

One of Britain’s biggest banks has called for downsizers to be allowed to claim back the cost of moving house from the taxman, a concession that it says would help free up 3.8 million homes for growing families. Barclays, the UK’s fifth-largest mortgage lender with a 9.9 per cent market share, has called on the government to incentivise “under-occupiers” to move to smaller homes. – The Times

US close

Both the Dow Jones and S&P 500 closed at record highs on Wednesday as investors thumbed over minutes from the Federal Reserve's latest monetary policy meeting.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.03% at 42,512.00, while the S&P 500 advanced 0.71% to 5,792.04 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.60% firmer at 18,291.62.

The Dow opened 431.63 points higher on Wednesday, extending gains recorded in the previous session.

Wednesday's primary focus were minutes from the Federal Reserve Open Markets Committee's September meeting, which revealed that a "substantial majority" of policymakers were in favour of slashing interest rates by 50 basis points in its first interest rate cut in four years.

On the macro front, US mortgage applications fell by 5.1% in the week ended 4 October, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, extending the prior week's 1.3% drop in taking a bite out of the almost 30% surge in demand throughout September.