British precision engineering firm ​Renishaw said on ‌Wednesday that it has appointed John ​Shipsey as ​its new chief financial ⁠officer and ​David Grant as ​permanent chairman. Shipsey, who previously served as CFO ​of technology ​company Dyson and engineering ‌firm ⁠Smiths Group, and held various senior finance and ​strategy ​roles ⁠at Diageo, will take ​up the ​role ⁠of Renishaw CFO from April ⁠13.

Swatch has once again opposed GreenWood Investors' bid for a seat on the board and has urged shareholders to vote against ​the activist investor at its upcoming annual general meeting, the ‌watchmaker said on Wednesday. The Swiss company, which sells luxury watches with its brands Omega, Breguet and Blancpain alongside its plastic watches, said the American firm's candidate and founder, ​Steven Wood, was not suitable to represent the interests of ​its shareholders. During a bid for a so-called bearer shareholder representative ⁠spot, Swatch said only 4% of GreenWood Builders Fund IV's shares in ​the company were bearer shares, while the other 96% were registered shares. It ​added that Wood did not have connections or experience in the Swiss industry. GreenWood did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Wood failed to secure a spot as bearer ​shareholder representative in May last year due to opposition from the Swatch ​founding family, the Hayeks, which controls around 45% of voting rights. Swatch had then recommended shareholders ‌vote ⁠against the election ahead of the annual meeting last year, with 79.2% of shareholders voting against Wood.

Algoma Steel Group Inc. has signed a deal to form a joint venture with Canadian armoured vehicle company Roshel Inc. The company says Roshel Algoma Defence will enable production of ballistic steel for military vehicles as well as other industries. The partnership will include metal fabrication, forming, welding, and machining in Canada. Based in Brampton, Ont., Roshel designs and builds armoured vehicles for the military and law enforcement customers. Algoma Steel chief executive Rajat Marwah says the company is ready to enhance Canada’s defence capacity. Faced with U.S. steel tariffs, the company has been working to become a supplier of high-quality steel plates needed for infrastructure, manufacturing and defence in Canada.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is seeking a $1.75 trillion valuation in its forthcoming initial public offering. How far into the stratosphere is that? Going by common Wall Street metrics, the answer is, way out there. SpaceX would immediately become the sixth most-valuable publicly listed U.S. firm, worth more ​than the likes of Meta Platforms, which has been publicly listed for more than a decade, and Berkshire Hathaway, a company older than SpaceX founder Elon Musk. And yet, there is no sign that ‌investors will think twice about hitting the buy button once it goes public in an IPO that could raise $75 billion or more, which would be a record. The frenzy has grown so intense that some are pouring money into opaque secondary markets, accepting complex arrangements and murky ownership just for a shot at owning the shares. "It has almost no comparable listed peer to benchmark a valuation off of and would likely come at a significant premium to anything else that is listed in the space tech sector, given its size and market leadership," said ​Samuel Kerr, global head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket.

Evotec said on Tuesday it would continue a dialogue with investor MAK Capital, ​which has published a list of ‌changes it wants the German biotech firm to make. "We have maintained a constructive dialogue with MAK Capital ​for some time and we look forward ​to continuing our engagement with them as ⁠well as with other investors," it said ​in a statement on Tuesday. Earlier on Tuesday, ​the biotech firm said the former head of Bayer's pharmaceutical unit, Dieter Weinand, had been proposed by its ​supervisory board for election as chairman. MAK on ​Monday called on Hamburg-based Evotec to carve out and list its ‌contract ⁠development and manufacturing division Just Evotec Biologics, among other demands in an open letter to management. MAK Capital holds around 7% of Evotec ​shares.

Gilead said on Tuesday it would acquire private Germany-based Tubulis GmbH for up ​to $5 billion, as the U.S. drugmaker looks to boost its ‌pipeline with a lucrative class of experimental cancer drugs referred to as "guided missiles". This marks the latest in Gilead's acquisition spree. The company has been expanding beyond its key ​areas for growth amid looming patent expiries and declining sales of ​its COVID-19 treatment. In February, the drugmaker bought partner Arcellx for ⁠up to $7.8 billion, its biggest deal since 2020, to strengthen its ​lineup of cancer treatments. Last month, it agreed to acquire privately held biotech ​firm Ouro Medicines in a deal worth more than $2 billion to expand its pipeline of immune disorder drugs. With the latest deal, Gilead will get access to Tubulis' drugs, which ​belong to the class called antibody-drug conjugates (ADC), popularly known as "guided missiles", ​that deliver chemotherapy directly to cancer cells while minimizing harm to healthy tissue.

Italy is likely to replace Roberto Cingolani as chief executive of defence group Leonardo, two sources close to the matter ​told Reuters, in what would be a major change in a round ‌of appointments at state-controlled companies. The replacement would come at a sensitive time for Leonardo as it competes for growing business in the defence and aerospace sector as governments worldwide increase military spending ​against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and escalating conflict in the Middle East. Italy, ​which owns a little more than 30% of Leonardo through the ⁠Economy Ministry, must file a slate of board candidates by April 13. Shares in Leonardo ​have soared by 780% since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but Prime Minister ​Giorgia Meloni is now pushing for a leadership change at the company, one of the sources said without providing further details.

Italy's government is leaning towards naming Lorenzo ​Mariani as the new chief executive of ‌Leonardo, four sources said on Thursday, ousting Roberto Cingolani in what would be a major change at the ​helm of the country's leading defence group. Mariani is ​a former executive at the defence and ⁠aerospace conglomerate, now serving as managing director for ​Italy at missile maker MBDA, which is jointly ​owned by Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo. "Almost," a senior government official told Reuters, when asked whether Mariani had been chosen ​to succeed Cingolani. The other sources confirmed ​the name of Mariani as the favourite for the job, ‌with ⁠an announcement expected as soon as Thursday. Italy owns a little more than 30% of Leonardo through the economy ministry.

Not long ago, the audit committee’s agenda was, by design, rigorous but relatively bounded: financial reporting integrity, internal controls, external auditor oversight and regulatory compliance. The work was exacting and consequential, but its perimeter was reasonably well-defined. AI is dissolving that perimeter. As a director of publicly traded companies and a partner at an AI governance firm, I have watched this transformation unfold in real time. AI is not approaching from some distant horizon. It is already reshaping how companies operate and how material risks and opportunities are surfaced and managed. For audit committees, this is not a future challenge to plan for. It is a present-tense governance obligation.

Activist investor Shah Capital plans to vote against the re-election of ​board nominees and the executive compensation package at Novavax's upcoming annual ‌meeting, renewing pressure for changes at the vaccine maker. Hedge fund founder Himanshu Shah in a letter on Wednesday, shared exclusively with Reuters, urged leadership to reduce costs and opportunistically buy back 10–20 ​million shares. Novavax said in an emailed statement to Reuters it continues ​to make targeted investments in R&D while continuing to significantly reduce ⁠costs. It has also partnered with Pfizer and has continued to make ​progress on a partnership with Sanofi, it added. Shares of the vaccine maker were ​up 4% to $8.32. Shah Capital, Novavax's second-largest shareholder with a 9% stake, has been pushing the biotech's board to pursue strategic changes, including a potential sale. The hedge fund on Wednesday said it ​wants a like-minded strategic long-term investor to take a 10–20% ownership stake ​to reshape the company.

Israel supports U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to suspend strikes against Iran ​for two weeks, but the ceasefire does not include ‌Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Wednesday. The premier's office said Israel backed the U.S. move provided Tehran immediately opened the strait and stopped attacks against ​the United States, Israel and countries in the region. The remarks ​came after Washington announced a two-week suspension of attacks against ⁠Iran as part of efforts to de-escalate the conflict and open ​a window for negotiations. Israel also said it supported U.S. efforts to ​ensure Iran no longer posed a nuclear, missile or "terror" threat to the U.S., Israel and Iran's Arab neighbours, adding that Washington had told Israel it ​was committed to achieving their shared goals in upcoming negotiations. Iran said ​on Wednesday negotiations with the U.S. would begin on Friday, April 10 in Islamabad. ‌Two ⁠White House officials confirmed earlier that Israel had agreed to the two-week ceasefire and to suspend its bombing campaign on Iran, while Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped mediate the deal, said ​in a post ​on X ⁠that the agreement included a cessation of Israel's campaign in Lebanon.

Shareholders have voted to approve Eldorado Gold Corp.’s deal to acquire Foran Mining Corp. valued at $3.8 billion when it was announced in February. Eldorado says its shareholders voted 84.2 per cent in favour of the deal. Meanwhile, Foran says its securityholders voted 83.4 per cent to approve the agreement. Eldorado chief executive George Burns says the acquisition of Foran’s McIlvenna Bay project in Saskatchewan adds a high-quality, long-life Canadian asset that complements the company’s operations and strengthens its position as a growth-oriented gold and copper producer. The deal is still subject to final court approval and other customary closing conditions. A B.C. Supreme Court hearing to approve the agreement is set to take place on Thursday.

Major proxy advisor Glass Lewis has recommended BP shareholders ‌vote against chair Albert Manifold over the company's decision to block a climate-related resolution from its annual general meeting, according to a note seen by Reuters. Shareholder advisory firms rarely recommend investors to vote against a chairperson or a board's wishes. Glass Lewis said Manifold, who became BP ​chair in October, was ultimately accountable for BP's decision to exclude a resolution filed by climate activist ​group Follow This from its April 23 AGM. The resolution called on BP to disclose how ⁠its strategy would perform under scenarios of declining demand for oil and gas.