Shares in the owner of convenience store giant 7-Eleven have jumped after a report that it has received a new takeover offer from Canadian rival Alimentation Couche-Tard.

The new offer values Japan’s Seven & i Holdings at more than $47bn (£36bn), which is around 20% higher than Couche-Tard’s original offer, according to Bloomberg News.

In September, Seven & i rejected a $38bn approach from Couche-Tard, saying it grossly undervalued the firm and that any potential takeover would face major regulatory hurdles.

BBC News has contacted Couche-Tard and Seven & i for comment.

Seven & i shares were around 5% higher in morning trade in Tokyo after initially jumping by 9.5%.

The new offer was reportedly submitted to Seven & i on 19 September and no discussions between the two sides have taken place since.

After the previous offer was rejected, Seven & i was added by Japan’s Finance Ministry to a list of businesses that are considered to be “core” to the country’s national security.

The move, which is largely considered to have little impact on Couche-Tard’s buyout attempt, forces prospective foreign investors in such Japanese companies to seek a government review.

A Japanese company of Seven & i’s size has never been bought by a firm from overseas.

Historically, companies from Japan were more likely to buy foreign businesses.

Last year, the Japanese government issued new guidelines on mergers and acquisitions, which called on companies to not reject credible takeover offers without proper consideration.

7-Eleven is the world’s biggest convenience store chain, with 85,000 outlets across 20 countries and territories.

If the deal went ahead, Couche-Tard’s footprint in the US and Canada would more than double to about 20,000 sites and create a 100,000-strong global convenience store chain.

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UK business leaders have pressed ministers to publish a clearer timeframe for their sweeping reforms to employment law, as unions and employer groups received a first glimpse of the measures to be set out in draft legislation later this week.

The Financial Times revealed on Friday that many of the measures in “Making Work Pay”, a package the Labour government has billed as the biggest upgrade of workers’ rights for a generation, will not kick in until as late as 2026 or even — in a couple of cases — until 2027.

Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and business secretary Jonathan Reynolds met unions and business groups on Tuesday to brief them on the broad content of the employment bill they will publish on Thursday. 

But business groups said that while they now had a clearer view of which measures would be included in the bill or implemented in other ways, there was still scant detail available on how central measures — such as the “ban” on zero-hour contracts or the right to day one protection against unfair dismissal — would be implemented.

Measures that are a priority for unions — including new rights for them to access workplaces — also have yet to be worked out. 

“Almost all [the measures] will require a lot more work,” one business lobbyist said.

The government is racing ahead with the legislation in order to meet its political promise to deliver the changes “within 100 days”.

Yet in reality, the imminent employment bill will be “skeleton legislation” and many of the biggest reforms will require further consultation and secondary legislation before it will take effect in workplaces — pushing implementation back by months or even years for certain measures. 

The government is expected to set out its thinking in more detail in a commentary to be published alongside the bill. But it was not yet ready to publish consultations on the regulations that would be needed to bring crucial measures into effect, attendees said. 

Business groups want ministers to publish a clear timetable for consultations and implementation alongside the draft bill, in order to reassure employers they will not be hit by a sudden avalanche of rule changes and will have time to prepare.

They argue that combined uncertainty over the Budget and employment law changes are already making employers wary of committing to new hires.

“There needs to be time to absorb it . . . it needs to be well communicated and well understood,” the lobbyist said, adding: “We need to try to ensure whatever comes through doesn’t increase the challenges of recruitment.”

Ministers were warned that small businesses, which often employ people seen as higher-risk hires, were particularly concerned about the impact of the package, according to people who attended or were briefed, with Rayner returning to this point more than once during the discussion. 

“There’s been a lot of meetings but it feels as if things have not really been set out,” said one person who has been involved in weeks of talks with ministers and officials over the draft legislation.

However, people present at the meeting said the mood was broadly positive, with unions and businesses reassured that their main concerns had been factored in.

“There’s no horror stories out of today’s meeting, no shocks,” one union figure said, adding: “Outside the revolutionary left, most of us are pretty happy with how much progress we have made.”

A government spokesperson said: “The majority of employers support our proposals to strengthen employment rights and boost productivity. This can only be achieved by working in partnership . . . with both business and unions to ensure we get the balance right.”

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A former UK energy industry lobbyist has been appointed to the influential role of leading the government’s climate policy watchdog as it prepares to set a new legal limit on the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The Climate Change Committee said Emma Pinchbeck, head of trade body Energy UK, would take over in November, ahead of its publication of a new “carbon budget” next year for the 2038-42 period.

The UK was the first major economy to set a legally binding target five years ago to reach net zero by 2050, but the committee has since advised bluntly and repeatedly that it was not moving fast enough.

The 38-year-old Pinchbeck represented the interests of Energy UK’s approximately 100 members across the heat, electricity, transport and tech sectors, which it said generated about 80 per cent of the UK’s power through wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, biomass and gas.

While it also represents some members involved in oil and gas extraction, UK Energy says it does not advocate for these parts of their business and agrees only to cover specific activities such as renewables.

The trade group said Pinchbeck had been a “powerful advocate” of the transition to clean energy. In the role, she also spoke in favour of burning biomass for power generation and promoted carbon capture, storage and utilisation, which some scientists and environmentalists believe is being promoted by the oil and gas industry to prolong fossil fuel production.

The government announced £21.7bn in support spread for the country’s first carbon capture and storage projects last week, being developed by Italian oil group Eni, BP, Equinor and TotalEnergies. The programme will run for 25 years, relying on a mix of taxpayer funding and higher energy bills.

Pinchbeck also has experience in the non-profit sector as former head of climate change and energy at WWF-UK. But it was her private sector background that CCC interim chair Piers Forster, a professor of climate physics, said would help in assessing the UK’s plans to decarbonise energy.

The committee has been without a permanent head since its outspoken former chief, Chris Stark, stepped down in April. He then warned the UK was losing out on green investment because of the policy rollbacks under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Stark is now leading the new government’s “mission control” attempt to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030.

Ed Miliband, UK energy secretary, said Pinchbeck was “well placed to advise and challenge government” on its net zero goals, ensuring it meets its climate commitments with “ambition and urgency”.

Within its first weeks in office, the Labour government also selected former Siemens UK chief executive Jürgen Maier to chair the £8.3bn state-owned GB Energy, which will own, manage and operate clean power projects and support carbon capture and hydrogen development.

It also recently appointed the new UK climate envoy, Rachel Kyte, who has extensive experience in climate policy after working at the World Bank and as a professor at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government.

Kyte’s appointment was the subject of opposition questions in parliament this week surrounding a donation by Quadrature Capital, the investment arm of a hedge fund group that funds the independent Quadrature Climate Foundation, where Kyte is co-chair of an advisory board.

Miliband said “all the proper processes were followed” and Kyte was esteemed for her climate leadership. QCF said it was focused on “funding and supporting science-led solutions to climate change”, adding that its donation was “values-based” and that it was “non-partisan and apolitical”.

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Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla plans to meet Starboard Value, said people familiar with the matter, as the activist investor’s $1bn stake in the pharmaceutical group puts pressure on its board to revive its share price.

Bourla and at least one other director will hold talks with Starboard next week, after it emerged this weekend the fund had taken a $1bn stake, equivalent to about 0.6 per cent of the $165bn company. The Financial Times previously reported the activist investor is calling for a strategy shift.

While engagement between companies and activist investors is not unusual, the planned meeting shows Starboard’s demands are getting a hearing at the highest levels of the company. It has created an extensive slide deck on its turnaround plans but has yet to circulate it.

Starboard’s exact recommendations could not immediately be ascertained and the firm declined to comment. Pfizer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Starboard’s campaign comes after the Covid-19 vaccine maker’s shares have sunk to below pre-pandemic levels. People briefed on the activist’s thinking said it believed Pfizer had been mismanaged as the pandemic receded, notably in spending its $92bn Covid windfall on a costly $70bn acquisition spree. Pfizer’s market value has roughly halved since its pandemic peak.

Starboard will be represented at next week’s meeting by its chief executive Jeff Smith and partner Patrick Sullivan, who runs its healthcare investments, said two people familiar with the matter. Pfizer’s lead independent director, Shantanu Narayen, is expected to accompany Bourla, one person said.

In an unusual twist, two of Pfizer’s top former executives are working with Starboard. The FT on Monday reported Pfizer’s former chair and CEO Ian Read and its former finance chief Frank D’Amelio called at least four Pfizer directors to ask them to consider collaborating with the activist investor.

Read, who served as CEO for eight years before becoming executive chair, promoted Bourla to the top job. Read and D’Amelio’s involvement is a rare example of former executives collaborating with an activist investor to push for strategy or management changes.

Starboard’s investment in Pfizer is not its first brush with the healthcare sector. It unsuccessfully urged pharmaceutical manufacturer Bristol Myers Squibb to drop its $74bn acquisition of cancer drugmaker Celgene in 2019. The same year, it entered into an agreement to add four directors to the board of Cerner, a health tech company now known as Oracle Health.

Some analysts doubt Starboard can transform the valuation of Pfizer, which has already announced $5.5bn of cost cuts through till 2027 to help restore investor confidence.

Vamil Divan, an analyst at Guggenheim Securities, said in a note on Monday that many of his conversations have “focused on investors wondering if we could see a change in Pfizer’s management team”. While that was “certainly possible”, it is unclear what that would mean for the company’s dividend, an important support for the stock.

Two investors told the FT on Monday they would be receptive to management changes.

Pfizer’s directors are in Ireland for tours of local manufacturing facilities and board meetings, with the main meeting scheduled for Wednesday.