The market was still in holiday mood today as leading shares drifted lower in thin trading.
With virtually nothing in the way of corporate news around, the few standout features were mainly the old takeover favourites.
ICI was lifted 6.5p to 451.25p on hopes that Dutch group Akzo Nobel would pounce. Traders believe such a move is plausible, but not before Akzo has demerged its healthcare business, which is expected in the first quarter of the new year.
Intercontinental Hotels continued its end of year run, up another 13p to £12.65 as bid speculation failed to die down. The takeover talk began in earnest last Friday, with suggestions of a £15 a share offer from - depending on who you wanted to listen to - a Dubai-based consortium, a private equity group or US giant Starwood. However analysts at Citigroup were cautious on the company, saying the shares were "fully valued on fundamentals", and the stock fell back from its best levels of the day.
Another hotel group, Millennium & Copthorne, was also said to be in the sights of a predator and its shares climbed 4p to 604p, valuing the business at around £1.8bn.
Overall the FTSE 100 slipped 4.3 points to 6240.9, with dealers reporting some profit taking on the last full day of trading before the year end. Wall Street was weaker by the time London closed despite a better-than-expected set of economic data, including jobless and housing figures, and a key confidence index. Traders said the US market was unsettled by reports that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs had been given a chunk of stock options in 2001 without authorisation from the computer group's board.
Back in the UK, property companies were wanted ahead of their plans to turn into tax efficient real estate property trusts in January. Land Securities led the way, up 36p to £23.17, while British Land added 24p to £17.22.
Miners were lifted by a rise in the tin price and steady performances among other metals. Xstrata added 59p to £25.55, while Antofagasta was 6.5p better at 508.5p.
But Vodafone fell 1p to 142p on concern it could get involved in an auction for Indian mobile phone business Hutchison Essar. Vodafone is believed to made an offer which values Hutchison Essar at $18bn (£9.17bn) , with rival bids expected from Essar itself, the Indian group's minority shareholder, and conglomerate Reliance.
BT lost 5p to 306.5p after Goldman Sachs confirmed its sell rating after the telecoms operator recently announced that its pensions deficit had widened to £3.4bn.
Elsewhere BG reversed earlier falls to end 1p higher at 697.5p on news it was paying $685m for America's Lake Road power plant in Connecticut. The company said the move strengthens its position in the New England power market.
Among the mid-cap companies, online gambling group PartyGaming added 2.25p to 32p as it confirmed a report in the Guardian that it was in talks to buy the gaming assets of smaller rival Empire Online for up to $40m. Empire intends to use the proceeds - and its existing cash pile of $250m - to invest in a range of public and private companies. Empire edged down 2p to 42p.
Ladbrokes slipped 2.25p to 420p despite winning 142 new betting licences in Italy. William Hill, down 0.5p to 633p, has won 35 new licences as part of the same round of awards.
Mitie, the cleaning and maintenance group, was lifted by a UBS recommendation and saw its shares climb 7.75p to 250.75p. "Although Mitie would be impacted by a downturn, we feel that the services it offers are critical to its customers," said UBS. "Due to this, we do not think Mitie would be as impacted as certain other companies in the support service sector were the economy to slow." It has raised its price target on the shares from 245p to 280p.
Lower down the market United Carpets was 1p better at 12.5p after announcing its half-year results. Turnover increased by 17.4% while profits climbed nearly 7% to £0.4m.
"This is a good performance," said Richard Ratner at Seymour Pierce, "and the like-for-like increase [of 11.6%] is much better than that of the market leader Carpetright, as well as the industry as a whole, which is estimated to be down." He has an outperform rating on the shares.
Drugs group SkyePharma, which yesterday unveiled plans to borrow £35m to help develop its Flutiform asthma treatment, was 0.5p better at 27.5p. Lehman Brothers announced today it had sold 27.6m shares, cutting its holding from 10.12% to 6.46%.
GTL Resources added 15p to 200p. The company said its US ethanol plant in Rochelle, Illinois, had started operations yesterday. The plant is a 50m gallon ethanol plant which was projected as starting up in December 2006 and is expected to be within the $80m budget. ⊃GTL have already applied for applications for permits to increase the plant capacity to 100m gallons.
Surfcontrol, the internet security firm which announced a takeover approach earlier this month, jumped 13.25p to 523.25p after US hedge fund Porter Orlin bought 4,122 more shares to take its stake to 13.12%.
But IP Live lost 1.5p to 16.75p. The entertainment investment company fell into a £266,448 loss at the half year, mainly due to the costs of closing down its unsuccessful Billy Joel musical Movin' Out at London's Apollo Victoria Theatre.
New issue Timan Oil & Gas, a Russian exploration and production business, got off to a good start on Aim. It climbed from its 76p a share placing price to 84p by the close.
Tomorrow sees the debut of Myhome International, which is moving from Plus Markets (formerly Ofex) to Aim. Today its shares on Plus closed unchanged at 67p.
Finally video games group Bright Things jumped 4.75p to 13p - a 60% rise - after it announced it had signed a licensing agreement to develop an interactive DVD game based on "a major sports franchise".