"We believe the US non-residential market will trough in 2011 and start to deliver positive growth from the second half."
Wolseley, the plumbing supplies group, ended up 19p at £16.01.
National Grid took the top spot after adding 12½ to 553½p as the City warmly welcomed the appointment of Andrew Bonfield, Cadbury's numbers man, as its new finance director.
Mr Bonfield, who replaces Steve Lucas who is retiring at the end of the year, is said to have a played a key role in forcing Kraft to increase its takeover offer for the Crunchie and Wispa maker.
Analysts at RBS said Mr Bonfield has both US experience from his time as chief financial officer at pharmaceutical group Bristol-Myer Squib and energy nouse from his days as finance director of BG Group.
National Grid was also boosted by news that Ofgem, the energy regulator, reckons £32bn needs to be spent on the UK's energy infrastructure over the next 10 years.
A new finance director also helped boost Yell, up 1 to 15.5p. The struggling FTSE 250 directories group's shares put on more than 10pc at one point following the appointment of Tony Bates, a former Colt Telecom executive, to the finance role.
BT took second spot in the bluechip index, up 3 to 145.8p, as traders absorbed positive news flow from last week.
Standard Chartered put on a late surge adding 3 to 145.8p after it announced plans to aggressively expand its small and medium-sized business operations.
The Asian-focused bank plans to hire 1,200 people to help small business over the next three years. "Almost everything we are trying to do, we want to double" said Standard Chartered's head of global consumer banking Steve Bertamini.
African Barrick Gold benefited from the continued belief that gold prices will continue their upward trajectory as calls grow for a fresh round of quantitative easing. The gold miner ended the day up 5½ to 605p after JP Morgan raised its target price to 900p from 755p.
However, the rest of the miners languished at the foot of the table and helped drag the FTSE 100 index down 36.93 points to 5555.97. Kazakhmys dropped 38p to £14.23 and Xstrata fell 32½p to £12.09. Xstrata was also hit by speculation that Singapore's Sin-Tang Developments maybe planning a bid to rival Xstrata's $416m offer for Australia's Sphere Minerals.
Inmarsat end the day down 13½ at 655p after its largest shareholder Harbinger Capital Partners confirmed that it is considering a possible stake sale.
The Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday that the US hedge fund manager was considering disposing of some of its 28.1pc stake in the telecoms group.
After the market closed Harbinger announced that it would sell 13pc of its stake. Credit Suisse and UBS have been appointed to run the sale.
The 60m share sale will weigh heavily on the shares because many believed that Philip Falcone, who manages the hedge fund, had been plotting a takeover.
Mr Falcone said: "Inmarsat has been a terrific investment for Harbinger and its investors. Although we have determined that we are not going to make an offer for all of the company, I remain a strong believer in Inmarsat's future and am extremely happy to maintain a core position in the company's stock and our partnership with Inmarsat through LightSquared."
In addition, LightSquared, a US broadband and satellite network provider, said it would accelerate the implementation of its spectrum co-operation plan with Inmarsat.
BP dropped 10.4 to 430.1p after the oil major announced it is to borrow €2bn (£1.7bn) to help it prop up a $20bn fund to compensate the victims of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.
Premier Foods led the FTSE 250, which lost 28.66 points to 10,563.8, after the Hartley's jam to Branston pickle food conglomerate confirmed that it is has received approaches for its Quorn meat-substitute business.
A sale of the division, which makes sausages out of fungi, could net Premier £250m, which would help reduce its £1.4bn debt mountain.
Rumoured bidders include Nestle, Unilever, Danone, Campbell's and host of private equity firms.
Martin Deboo, analyst at Investec Securities, said: "This is probably the one business within Premier that will attract the likes of Unilever and Nestle and their attendant deep pockets and ability to transact quickly."
The shares end the day up 1.7 at 17.9p.
Wellstream Holdings, increased for a third day, climbing 15.5 to 789p after General Electric was named as the group that made an £800m bid for the Brazilian-focused oilfield services group.
The US conglomerate made the approach last month through VetcoGray, an Aberdeen-based oil services subsidiary.
Rentokil Intitial slipped 0.2p to 101.3p despite renewed rumours that a European company is planning a takeover of the pest control and parcel delivery group.
Among the minnows engineering group MS International put on 9.7 to 134.7p after it won a $28.6m contract to supply the US Navy with 30mm naval gun weapons system.
Encore Oil was boosted 7½ to 135p after it discovered a substantial column oil at the Cladhan field in the North Sea. Alan Booth, chief executive, said: "It is still too early to put a precise figure on how large the discovery might be, but we are now very confident that we have a potentially significant commercial accumulation."
No comments:
Post a Comment