Diversified Energy acquires Appalachian assets, Avon gets $18m US helmet order

Stocks to watch

UK and US-listed oil group Diversified Energy Company has announced the acquisition of several assets in America’s Appalachian Basin, across Virginia, West Virginia and Alabama, which it says will complement existing operations and provide synergies to improve margins. The company is spending $45m on the assets, which currently produce around 2m barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Avon Technologies announced on Monday that its subsidiary Team Wendy Ceradyne has secured an $18m delivery order from the Defense Logistics Agency under the US Army's Next Generation Integrated Head Protection System (NG IHPS) helmet contract. The London-listed firm said the framework agreement, initially awarded in September 2021, was seeing continued demand for its advanced ballistic and brain injury mitigation technologies.

Newspaper round-up

The chief executives of FTSE 100 companies will have made more money in 2025 by midday on Monday than their average worker does in a whole year, according to the latest measure of inequality between bosses and their employees. Median pay for FTSE 100 chief executives is £4.22m, 113 times the median full-time worker’s pay of £37,430, according to the High Pay Centre, a campaign group. That means UK bosses will exceed their workers’ annual pay within 29 hours – or at about 11:30am on Monday, if they started work straight after the new year holiday. – Guardian

Labour must offer extra support to working parents, including with childcare and commuting, if it is to fulfil its promise of cutting child poverty, the Resolution Foundation thinktank has argued. The government’s manifesto promised an “ambitious strategy” on child poverty, and ministers have said they will publish a 10-year plan in the spring. – Guardian

Barclays has been criticised for paying mystery shoppers to pretend to be blind or deaf in an attempt to test the response of branch staff. The National Federation of the Blind of the UK (NFBUK), which campaigns for blind and partially sighted people, said the bank’s stunt was an “insult” to blind people and “totally inappropriate”. – Telegraph

Business fears over taxation have hit a record high in the wake of Rachel Reeves’s “devastating” Budget, according to a new survey by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC). Almost 63pc of businesses said they were concerned about the tax burden, findings show, up from 48pc three months ago and a higher proportion than ever before. – Telegraph

The competition between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the billionaire technology tycoons, is set to intensify after Amazon signalled it could start a satellite-based high-speed broadband service in the UK as early as this year. The move by Amazon, which was disclosed in filings by the American tech company with Ofcom, Britain’s communications regulator, would help Bezos make up ground against Musk’s Starlink service, which started launching satellites in 2019 and now has more than 6,700 in orbit. – The Times

US close

US stocks rebounded strongly from recent losses to end the week on a high, with tech stocks leading the surge as investors hunted for bargains after the Nasdaq slumped to a five-week low the previous session.

Sentiment was boosted by better-than-expected manufacturing data, and dovish comments from a Federal Reserve policymaker.

The Dow closed the day up 0.8% following four days in the red; while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq surged 1.3% and 1.8% respectively, ending their five-day losing streak.

On Thursday, the Nasdaq settled at 19,280.79 – its lowest level since 29 November.

In economic data, US manufacturing activity contracted for the ninth consecutive month in December, though at a slower pace.