After Tate & Lyle's slump on Friday after a hefty profit warning, it was almost inevitable its shares would make some kind of recovery today.
With analysts issuing downbeat notes - Panmure cut its price target from 645p to 415p, while JP Morgan reduced its estimate from 610p to 420p - some unkind souls described the revival as a dead cat bounce.
But traders were also taking on board a suggestion that the shares had fallen so far that the sugar and sweetener group could find itself a bid target.
The idea seems to have come from financial magazine Barron's, which punted Tate as a bolt-on acquisition for food giant Nestle.
So after Friday's 30% fall to a three-year low, Tate added 37.75p to 440.25p.
Elsewhere the new month began with yet more worries about the credit crunch.
Poor figures from banking groups UBS and Citigroup left investors in the financial sector feeling uneasy. Both the Swiss and US groups revealed the damage done from the American sub-prime debacle, with Citigroup saying its third-quarter profits would fall by 60%.
So Royal Bank of Scotland, now the favourite to win the auction for Dutch bank ABN Amro, lost 1.5p to 523.5p, but rival Barclays rose 5p to 600.5p on relief that it has almost certainly missed out.
Northern Rock was knocked back sharply again. Investors are increasingly coming to the view there may not actually be any value left in the business for shareholders, takeover hopes or no takeover hopes.
Panmure Gordon issued a sell note, saying: "Private equity buyers have reportedly been given clearance to look at Northern Rock. We could expect a bid for the loan book alone, at a discount. It has already been pointed out that a 3% markdown on the £97bn of customer loans on the Northern Rock balance sheet could wipe out the £2.3bn in shareholders' equity.
"We lower our price target from 300p to 100p, while pointing out that lower bids could be easily justified."
Northern fell 47.1p to 132.1p on fears that all this would mean a firesale of the company's assets. The jitters in the sector left Alliance & Leicester 13p lower at 779p.
Overall however leading shares managed to stay in positive territory, helped by a gravity-defying performance by Wall Street.
Despite the Citigroup woes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed to a new record as London closed, helped by investors snapping up technology shares such as Intel and IBM. There were also hopes that a weaker than expected manufacturing survey could prompt further US interest rate cuts, while a $8.1bn offer by Nokia for navigation software group Navteq Corporation suggested that large acquisitions could be back on the agenda after the recent credit squeeze.
So the FTSE 100 closed 39.4 points higher at 6506.2, while the FTSE 250 was 44.1 points better at 11,081.5
The miners moved higher, with Anglo American up 71p to £33.60 as said it would sell about half of its 41.8% stake in gold miner AngloGold Ashanti.
Credit Suisse helped a couple of the mining groups. Kazakhmys rose 100p to £15.05 as the bank raised its price target from £20 to £23, while Vedanta Resources added 97p to £21.27. This compares to Credit Suisse's new target of £20, up from £16.
Waste group Biffa continued its recent bounce, up 19p to 240.5p. The company issued an upbeat trading statement, saying its performance in the second quarter continued to be encouraging.
Killik & Co was positive on the company: "We believe it is well-placed to benefit from an increasing overall UK spend on waste management. Our price target is 309p."
Property group St Modwen climbed 23p to 498.25p as it issued an optimistic trading statement, while transport business FirstGroup accelerated 3.5p to 692p. The company said it had completed its $3.4bn purchase of US bus group Laidlaw and added that - because of strong cashflows at both companies since the deal was first announced- it no longer needed a rights issue to help fund the acquisition.
Investec moved its recommendation on FirstGroup from hold to buy, saying the shares looked inexpensive compared with other transport operators.
But UK Commercial Property Trust fell 3.5p to 80.5p after it revealed the value of its properties had fallen by 3.15% since the end of June.
Lower down the market biotechnology group Vernalis dropped 20.5p to 20p after the US Food & Drug Administration asked for more information as a condition of approving its migraine drug Frovatriptan as a preventative treatment for menstrual migraine.
Analysts at Landsbanki said: "The FDA questioned whether the data generated from trials were clinically meaningful, and also questioned the safety of the drug when used as a regular therapy.
"Having reviewed the clinical data ourselves, we are surprised at this decision. We believed the drug had a 60% probability of outright approval, and a 30% probability of approval following a request for further data. However, the FDA response suggests that further relatively lengthy trials may be required.
"Given there may be a requirement for the underlying studies to conducted again, we would anticipate a significant delay to any further clinical progression of Frovatriptan in this indication.
"Frovatriptan is a major driver in our valuation (41.4p of our 88p sum-of-the-parts valuation), [so] we are downgrading our recommendation from buy to hold, pending a further update from the FDA. Our target price is under review."
There was a bloodbath this morning in the debt advice market.
Debtmatters dropped 49.25p to 18.25p - a 73% slump - as it warned that possible changes to fee structures could mean it could not deliver Individual Voluntary Arrangements at a profit. So it is suspending direct advertising on TV and scaling back its IVA division. It is also reviewing its business and strategy, which could lead to it seeking an offer for the company.
Rivals also suffered in the wake of all this. Debt Free Direct fell 67p to 163p, despite trying to distance itself from Debtmatters, while Accuma lost 6p to 20p and Debts.co.uk was 20p lower at 76p.
Shore Capital analysts were negative on the whole sector.
"Consolidation now looks imminent but valuations remain difficult to calculate given the level of negative market sentiment in this sector and the possibility of further bad news," said the broker. "Therefore, we retain our sell recommendation on Debtmatters."
It added: "We retain our sell recommendation on the IVA sector as a whole for the time being as we expect there to be further bad news in relation to profit expectations."
Troubled property group Erinaceous fell 12p to 43p. Investors had been hoping for a takeover to end the continuing fall in its shares. But today entrepreneur Vincent Tchenguiz said his Consensus Business Group was in early stage talks but "has not made an approach to Erinaceous and is not in the course of preparing such an approach". This rather confusing statement added to the uncertainty surrounding the company, but was generally taken as bad news.