EasyJet rights issue 93pc subscribed, Smiths Group returns to revenue growth

Stocks to watch

Budget airline easyJet said its rights issue to raise £1.2bn was 93% subscribed, leaving underwriters to find buyers for the remaining shares or pick up the tab themselves. EasyJet earlier this month unveiled plans to raise the cash via a 31-for-47 rights issue at 410p each, a deep discount of 36% on the airline’s closing share price on September 8. Chief executive Johan Lundgren on Tuesday said the raising “will enable easyJet to strengthen its balance sheet and accelerate its post-Covid-19 recovery plan”.

Smiths Group reported a return to revenue growth and an increased final dividend as markets recovered from the Covid-19 crisis. The FTSE 100 engineering group's headline operating profit from continuing operations rose 14% to £372m in the year to the end of July as revenue fell 6% to £2.41bn from a year earlier. On an underlying basis profit rose 7% and revenue fell 2% with revenue growing in the final quarter.

Newspaper round-up

The billionaire chief executive of the money transfer provider Wise has been fined hundreds of thousands of pounds by HMRC for deliberately defaulting on his taxes, The Telegraph can reveal. Kristo Kaarmann, the Estonian co-founder of Wise, was charged £365,651 for a deliberate default during the 2017/18 tax year on a £720,495 tax bill. - Telegraph

A Czech billionaire has spent almost £9m preparing his bid to run the National Lottery, outgunning his rivals before the auction of Europe's most prized gambling contract. Karel Komarek's gambling group Sazka is vying to seize control of the National Lottery by ousting incumbent operator Camelot for the first time since the draw’s launch in 1994. - Telegraph

Octopus Energy, which has been taking on customers from collapsed rival suppliers, has secured up to $600m (£438m) from an investment fund set up by the former US vice-president Al Gore. Generation Investment Management (GIM), a $36bn fund manager that finances businesses focused on sustainability and tackling climate change, will take a stake of up to 13% in a deal that values Octopus at $4.6bn. - Guardian

The looming end of the stamp duty holiday this week is having no effect on the property market as house prices continue to rise. Over the past three months, prices have risen by 1.2 per cent, taking the cost of the average home in Britain up to £235,000, according to Zoopla, the online property portal. Over the past year, prices across the UK are up by 6.1 per cent. - The Times

The Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield has become an investor and adviser at Tahora, an HR app which is trying to help young employees build meaningful relationships in a hybrid-working world. The 36-year-old has spoken openly about his battles with depression, anxiety and poor mental health while at Monzo, the banking services firm he started in 2015 and which is now valued at around £1.2 billion. Blomfield left the business in January. - The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks put on a mixed performance on Monday as new Covid-19 cases continued to decline across the US and Treasury yields increased.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.21% at 34,869.37, while the S&P 500 was 0.28% softer at 4,443.11 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.52% weaker at 14,969.97.

The Dow closed 71.37 points higher on Monday, extending gains recorded in the final session of a week full of fears linked to the debt crisis of Chinese real estate giant Evergrande and the Federal Reserve's signalling of a rollback in monetary stimulus.

Reopening plays were in the green early on as US Covid cases continued to fall, with 120,000 new cases, on average, over the last seven days, down from a weekly average of roughly 166,000 cases at the peak of the latest wave, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Going the other way, tech stocks were trading lower as a result of investors rotating out of higher valuation shares amid an increase in yields as the benchmark 10-year Treasury note briefly topped 1.5%, its highest point since June.