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Most followed: Balfour Beatty, Carillion, fastjet, Huntsworth, Punch Taverns

Published: 20:41 11 Aug 2014 AEST

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It must be disconcerting for a chief executive when he announces plans to stand down and the share price goes up.

That is what has happened at Huntsworth (LON:HNT), where the shares are up 12.2% at 46p after Lord Chadlington signalled his intention to step down from the board of the company that includes Citigate Dewe Rogerson and Red among its trading names.

At Huntsworth’s annual general meeting in June almost a quarter of the votes cast were against approval of the board’s remuneration report, and almost one-third voted against approving the remuneration policy for the next three years.

Shares in Huntsworth are down almost one-third, year-to-date, and another peer, Lord Myners, recently moved into the chairman’s seat.

The spat between infrastructure specialists Balfour Beatty (LON:BBY) and Carillion (LON:CLLN) is taking up a lot of column inches, after the former rejected a revised merger proposal from Carillion.

One broadsheet is reporting that there has been a tentative attempt to broker a peace deal between the two companies, and Balfour Beatty seems to have left the door open to a possible deal by saying it “remains open to strategic value creating opportunities across the group,” but the difference of opinions over the proposed sale of Parsons Brinckerhoff looks like it could be a deal breaker.

Moving on from a potential punch-up to Punch Taverns (LON:PUB), the massively indebted pubs group that has disappointed the market by revealing that the launch of the proposed restructuring has been delayed.

In the financial equivalent of drinking-up time, except that some additional time is required to conclude discussions between certain stakeholders, and for the documentation to be finalised.

Punch’s plan is for a debt-for-equity swap that will considerably dilute the stakes of existing shareholders but which should secure the future of the company, with debt coming down by about £600mln to £1.56bn.

It is not a quoted company, but the announcement by Lake Acquisitions Limited is one of the most widely read stories on a popular company news site.

The story is a big one, but thankfully not as big as it might have been, as the company revealed that a defect on a boiler spine during an outage at the Heysham 1 Reactor 1.

Heysham 1 Reactor 1 remains shut down while work continues to characterise the nature of the defect.

EDF Energy is the company operating Heysham 1, but British Gas owner Centrica has a 20% interest in EDF Energy’s nuclear operations and it revealed this morning that outages at Heysham 1 and other nuclear power stations (which are being checked for similar faults) could shave 0.3p per share off earnings this year.

In comparison, passenger statistics from African low-cost airline fastjet (LON:FJE) might seem a bit prosaic, but the market seems pleased with them.

It carried 69% more passengers on its Tanzania routes last month than in the same month last year, while revenue per passenger was very strong with a 22% increase month on month.

On the traders’ screens mining giant Rio Tinto is seeing the most transactions, followed by banking giant HSBC and miner & commodities house Glencore.

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