Aston Martin Steps Up EV Push With Lucid Deal: The London Rush

2023-06-26 15:21

The M&A wave has rippled through to the automotive industry, with luxury carmaker Aston Martin striking an EV

The M&A wave has rippled through to the automotive industry, with luxury carmaker Aston Martin striking an EV supply deal that adds US company Lucid to its growing band of shareholders. Meanwhile, Renault sold a 24% stake in its UK Formula 1 unit to private equity firms, including American actor Ryan Reynolds-led Maximum Effort Investments.

Here’s the key business news from London this morning:

In The City

Associated British Foods Plc: The Primark owner now expects its full-year adjusted operating profit to be moderately ahead of last year as businesses continue to “trade well”.

Like-for-like sales at the budget fashion chain grew by 7% in the third-quarter, with “particularly strong” sales in health and beauty products as well as seasonal clothing and accessories
Primark’s store expansion plan is on track and the company has signed the lease for its first store in Texas

Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc : The luxury car maker struck a strategic supply agreement for high performance EVs that will see the US-based Lucid Group Inc. getting a roughly 3.7% stake in the UK company.

As part of the agreement, Aston Martin would issue about 28.4 million new ordinary shares to Lucid, which will also get phased cash payments, totaling an aggregated value of approximately $232 million

Alpine Racing Ltd: French car marker Renault SA agreed to sell a 24% stake in its UK Formula 1 Unit to Otro Capital, RedBird Capital Partners and Ryan Reynolds-led Maximum Effort Investments for €200 million.

The transaction values Alpine Racing Ltd, the UK entity representing Alpine’s F1 team and activities, at around $900 million

Cineworld Group Plc: The struggling cinema chain said it still hopes to emerge from bankruptcy protection in July, once administrators substantially transfer all of its assets to a new company controlled by group lenders.

The restructuring plan will not rescue Cineworld Group itself and shares are set to be suspended after administrators are appointed

In Westminster

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt will meet industry regulators this week to discuss what can be done to stamp out so-called “greedflation” as firms take advantage of the crisis to raise prices. The UK government is stepping up efforts to tame soaring inflation by threatening both a crackdown on corporate profiteering and another round of deep real terms cuts to public sector pay.

Rishi Sunak signaled on Sunday that he may take the unusual step of rejecting recommendations by the independent pay review bodies to screw down public sector wages once more. He’s also set to give more details about his staffing plan for the National Health Service, another sore point for the prime minister.Meanwhile, a report from English health charity The King’s Fund showed the NHS has “strikingly low” levels of key clinical staff and worse health outcomes for diseases like cancer compared with other similar countries. The UK is also heavily reliant on foreign-trained staff and loses many of its nurses to other nations, particularly Australia and New Zealand.