Quilter names Glyn Barker as chairman-designate, IMI looks to acquire Germany's Bahr Modultechnik

London pre-open

The FTSE 100 was being called to open 28.7 points higher ahead of the bell on Monday after closing out the previous session 0.27% firmer at 7,585.46.

Stocks to watch

Wealth management business Quilter has tapped Berkeley Group chairman Glyn Barker to take over from outgoing chair Ruth Markland, effective from 7 September.

Quilter said on Monday that Barker will take a seat in its boardroom as a non-executive director and as a member of its remuneration and its corporate governance and nominations committee effective on 1 June, while Markland will continue as chair of the board until Barker's appointment becomes effective.

Specialist engineer IMI revealed on Monday that it planned to snap up Germany's Bahr Modultechnik for an enterprise value of €98.0m.

IMI said Bahr will become part of the industrial automation business unit within its IMI Precision Engineering division. Closing was expected to take place by mid-June 2022.

Newspaper round-up

Three-quarters of small and medium-sized companies are worried about the long-term impact the cost of living crisis, soaring energy bills, and rising inflation will have on their business, a survey has found. Just over half (51%) of SMEs said they were concerned that rocketing prices would dent consumer spending, in response to Barclays' SME Barometer, a quarterly survey of business sentiment conducted for the bank. - Guardian

The average price of a UK home has topped £250,000 for the first time, but the proportion of sellers reducing their asking price and the time taken to sell a home have both increased, according to Zoopla's latest market index. The property company, which bases its monthly snapshot on a combination of sold prices, mortgage valuations, and data for agreed sales, said the average cost of a home hit £250,200 in April, but that the pace of price growth was slowing. - Guardian

Boris Johnson's plans for a nuclear energy revolution are facing a fresh hurdle after the Austrian government officially raised concerns about the safety of a new reactor design. In a letter to the Business Department, Austria's energy ministry raised the spectre of "severe accidents with high releases" at the Sizewell C plant to be built in Suffolk. - Telegraph

Britain's biggest privately owned financial services group is seeking to hire an investor relations team, a step usually seen as a prelude to a flotation. Revolut is searching for a head of investor relations with listed company experience and wants to hire one or two other IR professionals. The step closer to an initial public offering comes at a difficult time for financial technology businesses, with investor sentiment souring on the back of a technology sell-off on Wall Street. - The Times

Britain is monitoring hundreds of businesses that could be using havens offshore to lower their tax bills under a new system that requires authorities from the British Virgin Islands to the Caymans to share information. A Freedom of Information request by Pinsent Masons, the law firm, to HM Revenue & Customs found that the taxman had received 429 records relating to 277 UK taxpayers in the year to 16 March under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's "no or nominal tax jurisdiction" regime. It has been generating information to exchange since March last year. - The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks closed sharply higher on Friday as market participants digested some key inflation data.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.76% at 33,212.96, while the S&P 500 was 2.47% firmer at 4,158.24 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 3.33% stronger at 12,131.13.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com