ABF goes on shopping spree

London open

The Footsie is being called to start the day 25 points higher from Thursday's closing level of 6,136.89.

Stocks to watch

Associated British Foods announced on Friday morning that it had reached agreement with the Board of Illovo Sugar to acquire the 48.65% interest in Illovo that it did not already own. The FTSE 100 firm acquired a majority shareholding in Illovo in 2006, and flagged the acquisition of the remainder on 8 February and 18 March this year. ABF’s board said the agreed offer price per share was ZAR 25, representing a total consideration of ZAR 5.6bn (£262m) to be settled in cash. Illovo remains the largest sugar producer in Africa, and is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. It has leading market positions in South Africa, Malawi, Zambia and Swaziland and a strong presence in Mozambique and Tanzania.

Pharmaceuticals company AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly have decided to continue a pivotal clinical trial for a potential treatment for early Alzheimer’s disease. AstraZeneca said on Friday that Amaranth, a phase II/III study of AZD3293, an oral beta secretase cleaving enzyme (BACE) inhibitor currently in development as a potential treatment, will continue into phase III of the phase II/III seamless trial.

In the press

David Cameron has bowed to a week of political pressure and disclosed that he had made money from an offshore fund. After days of semi-denials and artfully crafted statements, the prime minister on Thursday night admitted that he and his wife sold shares for more than £30,000 in a fund set up in Panama by his father, who died in 2010. – Financial Times

A British vote to leave the EU would “gravely weaken” Europe and could trigger the end of the continent’s influence as a global superpower, former prime minister Sir John Major has warned. In a significant intervention in the increasingly acrimonious battle over the UK’s forthcoming referendum on membership of the EU, Sir John told an audience at an investment conference in Hong Kong on Thursday that a UK departure “would not only be a huge setback for my own country but for many other nations, too”. – Financial Times

A company owned by one of Hong Kong’s riches families, which started life trading tablecloths and bedding from China to the rest of the world in the 1950s, has committed £200m to real estate in the UK. Peterson Group announced today that it has taken a 20pc stake in London-based property investor LJ Partnership, which among other things bought the Holiday Inn hotel in Kensington for £345m in December last year – London’s biggest hotel deal of the year. – Telegraph

US close

Wall Street finished the day lower, weighed down by losses in the commodities space and banks amid a slide in the value of the US dollar versus the Japanese yen, although there was some better-than-expected news on the jobs front.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 0.98% or 174.09 points lower at 17,541.96, the S&P 500 was down 1.20% and the Nasdaq off 1.47%.

At the same time, the rally in oil prices - sparked by Wednesday’s better-than-expected data from the Energy Information Administration – lost steam as an official from the state-run South Oil Company in Iraq said exports from the country’s southern ports rose to an average of 3.494m barrels per day in April from 3.286m in March.

West Texas Intermediate was down 56 cents by the closing bell at $37.26 a barrel on the NYMEX.