Apple cheers Trump with $500bn US investment plan; UK defence firm Chemring ‘targeted’ by private equity firm – business live

There’s a second flurry of takeover excitement in the City of London.

Oil services and engineering company John Wood has entered talks with Sidara about a potential takeover by the United Arab Emirates-based company, the Financial Times reports.

This has lifted John Wood’s share price by 30% to 34p, raising its value to around £240m.

That recovers some of its recent losses – the company’s value halved on 14th February after it predicted its free cashflow would be negative this year.

Awkwardly for John Wood, it rejected a £1.4bn takeover offer from Sidara last May, arguing that the bid “fundamentally undervalued” the company. That’s hard to defend, given Sidara were offering 205p per Wood share….

Wood Group has been in talks with lenders about refinancing its $1.26bn debt pile before some loans mature.

The crisis at Wood Group escalated last week when its chief financial officer, Arvind Balan, stepped down and admitted he had mis-described his accountancy qualifications.

The new Apple Manufacturing Facility to be opened in Houston, Texas, will produce AI servers which are currently being made outside the US.

Apple says the new 250,000-square-foot facility is expected to open in 2026, and will create “thousands of jobs”.

The company adds:

Previously manufactured outside the U.S., the servers that will soon be assembled in Houston play a key role in powering Apple Intelligence, and are the foundation of Private Cloud Compute, which combines powerful AI processing with the most advanced security architecture ever deployed at scale for AI cloud computing. The servers bring together years of R&D by Apple engineers, and deliver the industry-leading security and performance of Apple silicon to the data center.

Donald Trump has welcomed Apple’s plan to invest $500bn in its US operations over the next four years, and – predictably – wants the credit.

Writing on his Truth Social site, the US president says Apple was making the investment because of “faith in what we are doing”, before thanking the company.

Trump met with Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, last week – after which he claimed Apple was planning to shift manufacturing from Mexico to the US, to avoid tariffs.

Apple has announced a massive $500bn (£400bn) investment plan across the US over the next four years.

The tech giant is planning to hire around 20,000 people, of which the vast majority will be focused on R&D, silicon engineering, software development, and AI and machine learning.

Apple says it will expand its facilities, and hire more staff, in Michigan, Texas, California, Arizona, Nevada, Iowa, Oregon, North Carolina, and Washington.

The plan includes building a new factory in Texas, doubling the size of its US Advanced Manufacturing Fund, opening a manufacturing academy in Detroit, and accelerating its investments in AI and silicon engineering.

The move follows pressure from Donald Trump for US companies to invest more in their US facilities, and the threat of tariffs on imports from overseas.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, says:

“We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country’s future.

“From doubling our Advanced Manufacturing Fund, to building advanced technology in Texas, we’re thrilled to expand our support for American manufacturing. And we’ll keep working with people and companies across this country to help write an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation.”

Shares in UK defence company Chemring have suddenly jumped, following reports that it has received a takeover approach from private equity firm Bain Capital.

Sky News are reporting that in recent weeks Bain Capital has lodged at least one proposal to acquire Chemring, which manufacturers products used in defence kit and by organisations including Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

An initial bid “may have been tabled at 390p-a-share”, Sky adds. That would be around 9% more than Friday’s night’s closing price of 358p.

Shares in Chemring have jumped as high as 408p, up 15%, which suggests traders expect a higher offer.

Chemring designs, develops and manufactures “advanced expendable countermeasures” to protect aeroplanes, boats and land-based combat vehicles, supplying 85% of NATO air fleets and 60% of NATO naval fleets.

Chemring say they are also a “key supplier” to NASA, SpaceX and Martin-Baker, and supplied more than 230 parts on the Mars Perseverance mission.