Coca-Cola HBC to buy Brown-Forman Finland, Spectris agrees purchase of MicroStrain

Stocks to watch

Coca-Cola HBC said it has agreed to buy Brown-Forman Finland, owner of the Finlandia vodka brand, for $220m. The business is being bought from Brown-Forman Corporation's wholly-owned subsidiary, Brown-Forman Netherlands BV.

Spectris announced that it has agreed to buy Vermont-based MicroStrain for $37.6m (£29.4m). MicroStrain is a developer of inertial and wireless sensing systems, serving the industrial and aerospace sensing systems market. The business will be integrated into Spectris Dynamics, which has a long-established presence in high precision sensing solutions and where it will benefit from leveraging Spectris Dynamics' global sales and service network.

NextEnergy Solar Fund said in its full-year results on Monday that its net asset value per ordinary share increased to 114.3p for the 12 months ended 31 March, with ordinary shareholders' net asset value reaching £674.4m. The FTZE 250 fund declared a total dividend of 7.52p per ordinary share for the period, and a target dividend increase of 8.35p per ordinary share for the 2024 financial year, with a forecasted cash dividend cover of 1.3x to 1.5x. Since its initial public offering, the fund said it had declared total dividends of £305.8m, or 55.72p per share.

Newspaper round-up

EU exports of electric cars to the UK worth €30bn a year will be put at risk unless the Brexit trade deal is tweaked, representatives of the sector in Brussels have said. Three of the world’s biggest car manufacturers have already called on the British government to open talks over new rules that will see 10% tariffs put on exports to the EU, if 45% of an electric vehicle by value does not originate in the EU or the UK. – Guardian

One of Britain’s largest pension schemes has slashed its holding of UK stocks in a blow to Jeremy Hunt’s hopes of triggering a ‘Big Bang 2.0’. BT’s £39bn pension fund has cut back its exposure of London-listed stocks to just £100m – or 0.3pc of assets – new figures have revealed. Investment has fallen from £300m last year and £3.6bn in 2010. The BT scheme is the largest on London’s blue-chip FTSE 100 index, with around 270,000 members. – Telegraph

B&Q is lowering the temperature of its stores and dimming the lights in a push to cut costs and avoid price rises as inflation runs rampant. Kingfisher, which also runs the Screwfix chain, has lowered the temperature of heaters in stores by between 1 and 2 degrees celsius. It has started switching on the heating later in the morning and turning it off earlier in the evening. – Telegraph

Airbus is promising Britain’s first new helicopter factory in decades, bringing hundreds of new jobs and billions of pounds of exports if the Ministry of Defence chooses it to build a new generation of helicopters to replace the UK’s ageing fleet of Pumas. The European aerospace company is competing with the Italian group Leonardo, formerly AgustaWestland, and the American multinational Lockheed Martin to win a £1.1 billion deal to build at least 25 Puma replacements. – The Times

Intel is to spend $25 billion building a new computer chip factory in Israel, the latest in a string of recent investments that have shone a light on the UK’s more limited microchip ambitions. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, confirmed the deal yesterday and described it as the largest ever international investment in the country. “[It is] a tremendous achievement for the Israeli economy: 90 billion shekels [$25 billion],” he said. – The Times

US close

Wall Street’s main stock gauges all closed in the red on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.32% at 34,299.12.

The S&P 500 lost 0.37% to 4,409.59, and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.68% weaker to see out the session at 13,689.57.