The earnings season continues with Woodward, Kingspan, Demant, Grand City, Diploma and Manchester United due to report their earnings today.

That's a no! (for the moment). HP Inc rejects Xerox's $33.5 billion merger offer as too small, without closing the door on a joint transaction. HP's board unanimously considers that the proposal "significantly undervalues" the company. "In reaching this conclusion, the Board also considered the highly conditional and uncertain nature of the proposal, including the potential impact of huge debt levels on the combined entity's performance," he said. The Wall Street Journal announced on Thursday that activist investor Carl Icahn, who is present in the capital of both companies, is in favor of a merger.

Dubai Airshow. The Dubai Air Show, the largest in the Middle East, opened its doors yesterday and could be the scene of some major order announcements, between a Boeing seeking redemption after the B737MAX affair and an Airbus that needs to sell something other than single-aisle aircraft. Airbus today received orders for 120 A320neo (Air Arabia) and 50 A350 (Emirates).

Consolidation in the stock market. Euronext finally confirmed by press release that it had begun discussions with the Madrid Stock Exchange with a view to a merger. According to the established formula, there is no guarantee that the discussions will be successful. Problem, SIX, the operator of the Swiss stock exchange, had the same idea and proposes EUR 34 per share for BME, or 2.84 billion euros of valuation.

Wooed Qiagen. Qiagen confirmed that it had received several expressions of interest and decided to start studying several projects, after Thermo Fisher's rumors of an offer. Specifically, the European company states that it has "started evaluating potential strategic alternatives after receiving several non-binding conditional expressions of interest for the acquisition of all the company's issued and outstanding shares". Discussions have started with interested parties. But no names were mentioned.

Marriage of reason. Z Holdings (a subsidiary of SoftBank and parent company of the Yahoo Japan portal) and Line have formalized their marriage. "The integration provides for commercial cooperation between SoftBank, Naver, Z Holdings and Line in various fields and industries, including artificial intelligence, Internet research, telecommunications, advertising, payments, communication, etc.," said the Japanese group, which wants to create an entity that can compete on the Internet with foreign giants. A transaction that was positively received on the stock market.

At the bottom of the range. Saudi Aramco set Sunday a price range that values the group between 1600 and 1700 billion dollars for its initial public offering, below the latest estimates and initial wishes of the Crown Prince. A transaction carried out on the Riyadh Stock Exchange and involving only 1.5% of the capital, even if this "only", taking into account the amounts involved, is between $24 and $25.5 billion. The final price is expected on December 5.

In short, elsewhere. After completing negotiations with General Motors and Ford, the powerful American syndicate U AW turns to Fiat Chrysler. The FTC's green light will allow Bristol-Myers Squibb to buy Celgene before the end of the month. The C-Band Alliance (Intelsat, SES, Telesat) has submitted its proposal for a contribution to the US Treasury. Ford will offer an electric version of its famous Mustang, to enter the high-end market. Barrick Gold sold half of its shares in the Australian Kalgoorlie Super Pit gold mine for $750 million. Mitsubishi Chemical will acquire Mitsubishi Tanabe.