Aldermore’s shares up 18pc as Firstrand makes £1bn offer

CHALLENGER bank Aldermore found its share price boosted yesterday after it confirmed that South African lender Firstrand had made a £1bn takeover offer.

Shares in the FTSE 250 bank jumped 47.5p to 303.5p, its highest closing price since July 2015, on news that Firstrand was willing to pay 313p per share to acquire the company, a premium of 31pc over last Friday’s closing price.

Under Takeover Panel rules, Firstrand now has until 5pm on Nov 10 to either announce a firm intention to make an offer for Aldermore, or to announce it doesn’t intend to proceed.

Acquiring Aldermore would allow Firstrand to build its UK business; it is looking to move away from its reliance on African markets that have been depressed by a slump in oil and commodities prices.

The question now is whether a second bidder emerges – consolidation in the challenger bank sector is seen as an inevitability by many analysts.

Meanwhile, shares in fund manager Ashmore jumped after it reported its strongest inflows in four years, with investors keen to take a punt on emerging markets.

Net inflows hit $4.3bn (£3.2bn) in the first three months of its financial year to Sept 30. This was the third consecutive quarter of inflows, after two years of money flowing out.

Total assets under management soared 11pc to $65bn.

The FTSE 250 company’s stock climbed as high as 392.2p in early trading, before closing at 378.5p, 25.3p higher.

Takeaway delivery company Just Eat found itself dented by news from technology giant Facebook, which yesterday unveiled a new feature that allows users to order food from local restaurants.

Although Facebook’s feature is currently only available in the US, shares in Just Eat, which allows people to order from more than 20,000 different restaurants, fell 16.5p to 732.5p.

Just Eat also found itself in the news earlier this week after the Competition & Markets Authority provisionally cleared its £200m planned takeover of rival Hungryhouse, which could see it cling on to its dominant position in the UK market for now. Packaging company

Mondi slumped 33p to £19.12, two days after it issued a profit warning brought about by increasing costs of raw materials. The share price fall takes its total losses since Monday morning to 189p. Fellow packaging firm

Smurfit Kappa also appeared to suffer a read-across for the second time this week, finishing 50p down at £21.80.

And it was a bad day for engineering group GKN, which sliced 34.8p from its share price to close at 318p after it warned that two mysterious legal claims could cost it £40m.

Analysts pointed out that the potential charges were equal to 5pc of last year’s operating profits and would wipe out any of the profit increase the company had made in the last year. The firm was the FTSE

100’s biggest faller, although it managed to reverse some of the initial fall after boss Nigel Stein explained the steps he was taking to make sure the business could move forward.

The blue-chip index finished the day 20.8 points lower than its record close yesterday, at 7,535.44.

Meanwhile, the FTSE 250 finished 8.27 points up, at 20,259.51.