£5bn bid for Just Eat whets shareholders’ appetites

THE battle for takeaway group Just Eat is heating up nicely.

Last week, it emerged that Prosus, part of South African group Naspers, gatecrashed Just Eat’s merger with Dutch rival Takeaway.com by launching its own £4.9billion bid for the FTSE 100 company, which was rejected.

This week, Prosus will begin the job of trying to persuade shareholders to back its deal.

Aberdeen Standard Investments has already claimed the Prosus offer is £1billion too cheap, raising the prospect of a higher bid. But however high it goes, Prosus would still be unlikely to win over Cat Rock Capital, the activist investor, since it has a stake in both Just Eat and Takeaway.com.

At 757p, Just Eat’s share price is above Prosus’s bid of 710p per share and suggests investors think a bidding war with higher offers will break out.

A Prosus spokesman said: ‘We believe our offer is superior and provides certain value to shareholders. We look forward to discussing it with them in the days and weeks to come.’

Whoever wins the food fight, investors in Just

Eat will be lining their pockets, not their stomachs.

HSBC and Standard Chartered both update investors on trading this week, shedding light on the impact of the unrest in Hong Kong on their businesses for the first time.

The Asia-focused banks’ third-quarter results tomorrow and Wednesday respectively will be closely watched by Steve Eisman of New York investment firm Neuberger

Berman. Eisman, – made famous by the Hollywood movie The Big Short – has picked the Hong Kong protests as a major risk to the global economy and is betting against shares in HSBC and Standard Chartered in an effort to profit from it.

Any negative noises from HSBC tomorrow will likely cause its rival’s shares to tumble.

ITS shares may have reversed 40 per cent since it floated in New York in March, but cabhailing app Lyft could get the jumpstart it needs on Wednesday.

That’s according to number crunchers at HSBC, who reckon the company will post better than expected turnover for the third quarter, thanks to higher pricing for its journeys and more subscribers.

Investors were impressed by stronger turnover in the second quarter, but questions still remain over how it will turn huge losses into profit.

Lyft’s founders say the company should become profitable by the end of 2021. Could now be the time to jump on board?