Charles Capel

It is rare you see comments from a FTSE 100 CEO as frank as Vodafone’s Margherita Della Valle at this morning. “Our performance has not been good enough. To consistently deliver, Vodafone must change,” she said in a full year statement in which she announced the company is cutting 11,000 roles across three years in a new action plan. That also involves a strategic review in Spain and a turnaround plan in Germany.

A group of investors including Blackstone and Thomson Reuters are selling down their stake in LSE Group at a rapid pace this year. Overnight, the group sold £2.7 billion worth of shares, a sizeable chunk of the financial services group. That came just two months after their previous £2 billion disposal and off the back of direct repurchase of £750 million shares by the company itself.

BT’s plans to significantly cut their workforce have been long-signaled, with cost-cutting one of the companies key goals in recent years. The scale of them — up to 42% by the end of the 2020s — however, was not yet known. It comes off the back of a similar set of job cuts by Vodafone Plc who, on Tuesday, revealed plans to cut 11,000 jobs over three years.

Ryanair’s optimistic outlook for the summer season could spell good news for the aviation and holiday industry more broadly, indicating that people aren’t putting foreign holidays on the chopping block as finances tighten. The airline, however, may have benefited from holiday-goers putting rock-bottom prices above all else, meaning more expensive competitors could face an uphill battle — and even Ryanair isn’t averse to raising fares.

French billionaire Patrick Drahi’s steadily growing stake in BT has been a point of fascination for watchers of the UK’s telecommunications industry. The initial holding, revealed in June 2021, has been slowly rising. It has also been the subject of a national security review by the UK government, which ultimately cleared it in August last year. Now, the telecoms tycoon owns almost 25%, although he still says he doesn’t plan to make a takeover offer.

The decline in electricity prices stemming from Ofgem’s reduced price cap today won’t just be a relief for people living in the UK who have been paying through their teeth to keep the lights on. Lower energy bills may also give pet owners more cash to spend on their cats and dogs — at least that’s what Pets at Home is probably hoping for as it targets growth of 7% a year. Question is, will that be enough to keep their investors’ tails wagging?

At last. Asda’s long-awaited acquisition of EG Group’s UK and Ireland operations includes around 350 petrol filling station sites and over 1,000 food-to-go locations, which will help the discount grocer expand its footprint in the highly competitive convenience sector. Crucially, it will also help the Issa brothers, the billionaire owners of both EG Group and Asda, to refinance debt coming due in 2025.

The world’s largest producer of natural soda ash may not be the blockbuster listing the London Stock Exchange was looking out for, but it’s certainly a welcome one. Kew Soda, which trades under WE Soda, announced its plans to float this morning. With revenue of just over £1.4 billion in 2022, it looks set to end the London market’s drought of large listings.

At more than 20 years British Land’s time in the prestigious FTSE 100 index is coming to an end, falling victim to the turmoil rising interest rates are causing in the commercial property market. It’ll be replaced by IMI Plc, the Birmingham-based engineering company. It also means Ocado, whose shares have fallen as the cost-of-living crisis squeezes its customers, has narrowly avoided demotion.

It was only in November last year when Dechra Pharmaceuticals, the pet medicine maker, was a member of the FTSE 100, with a peak market cap of about £5.8 billion. Fast forward to this morning, now a member of the FTSE 250, when they agreed to a £4.5 billion takeover deal from Swedish investment firm EQT — a lower price to the offer on the table a few months ago.