Shares round-up: a Schroders takeover and Morgan Sindall upgrade
There’s been further M&A action as American firms continue to circle cheap British assets, while City writer Graeme Evans finds a FTSE 250 company in an upgrade cycle.
12th February 2026 13:34
by Graeme Evans from interactive investor
Schroders’ building in the City of London. Photo: Peter Dazeley via Getty Images.
A shock swoop for Schroders (LSE:SDR) today continued a hot streak of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity as traders also focused on the latest in a long line of Morgan Sindall Group (LSE:MGNS) upgrades.
US-based Nuveen’s agreed offer values Schroders at £9.9 billion, although analysts at Panmure Liberum said this was too cheap given the asset manager’s recent turnaround progress.
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Shareholders will get a cash element of 590p, which is 29% higher than last night’s closing price and 42% above the three-month volume-weighted average.
The bid, which has the support of members of the founding family, creates a combined business with £1.8 trillion of assets across institutional and wealth channels. The Schroders brand will be retained.
Schroders joined the London Stock Exchange in 1959, when the offer was oversubscribed 18 times and the Schroder family retained a significant holding. The stock has been a member of the FTSE 100 index since 2007, having originally joined the top flight in 1993.
Panmure Liberum said Schroders had been a “mess”, with costs inflating as fast as revenues prior to the arrival 15 months ago of a new management team led by Richard Oldfield.
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A turnaround plan launched last March included three-year targets to simplify, scale and “deliver for our stakeholders”. The company reported good progress in today’s annual results, with record assets under management and renewed momentum across the group.
Panmure said: “To have achieved quite so much, quite so quickly is staggering, but still the market was not reflecting that in either estimates or rating. The bid comes at ‘a premium’ but this was the premium play in the sector.”
The City bank said it had been prepared to value an independent Schroders at 600p.
It added: “Who would ever have believed in Schroders being bid for? Certainly not us for most of the last three and half decades.
“We fear that the offer came too soon in the process of change, and another year of the kind of change seen already in 15 months might have put the share price in a different starting place.”
The move for Schroders highlights a further shift in momentum in UK M&A activity after a quiet period in the second half of 2025.
Glencore (LSE:GLEN) and Beazley (LSE:BEZ) have also been bid targets this year, although the miner is no longer in a takeover situation after the collapse of merger talks with Rio Tinto Ordinary Shares (LSE:RIO).
Peel Hunt noted last week that this year has already seen eight bid approaches, compared with 2025’s total of 41 when there was not a single FTSE 100 move.
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In today’s session, Morgan Sindall topped the FTSE 250 index after the construction-based firm extended its run of profit upgrades to at least 12 in the past decade.
It said that fit-out division profits for 2026 are on course to be significantly ahead of expectations and well above the top end of the medium-term target of £80-100 million. The division trades through the Morgan Lovell and Overbury brands.
The performance means that the group outlook for 2026 is also ahead of expectations.
Cash generated from the fit-out and construction businesses is invested into the housing and mixed-use Partnerships division in order to create longer-term value for the group and shareholders.
However, Peel Hunt said the stronger performance, order book visibility and confident outlook look set to place pressure on management to review capital allocation priorities.
Within the subsector, the City bank points out that Morgan is the only company not to have returned surplus cash via a share buyback or special dividend.
The shares rose another 280p to 5,330p today, leaving them up by about 80% since last March as the group added that 2025 results on 25 February will be in line with current expectations. Peel Hunt has an Add recommendation and new price target of 5,500p.
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