Yesterday's trading: Bid gossip fires up Wood Group
Bears must surely have noticed, but it has become abundantly clear in recent weeks that the market doesn't want to go down.
Geoff Foster: Something extraordinary is needed this summer.
However, dealers believe it now needs something out of the ordinary to happen in order to take it to another level during the long summer months.
A mega Footsie takeover bid would probably do the trick, but corporate activity has been crippled by the credit crisis.
The boys in dark glasses were certainly out in force yesterday, responding to rumours of a £4.5bn merger in the oil services sector.
Excited punters chased Wood Group, the international energy services group, 15¾p higher to 283¼p on revived gossip of a possible cash bid from Amec, 20p up at 651½p.
Perennial bid favourite Wood has 66-year-old Aberdonian oil baron Sir Ian Wood as chairman. Speculation yesterday suggested he is considering retirement and so could be a seller of his 5% stake at a premium price.
Dealers have been waiting a long time for Amec's chief executive Samir Brikho to pull off a 'transformational' deal and the acquisition of Wood Group, currently valued at £1.5bn, would certainly be applauded in the City.
Since arriving at Amec in October 2006, Brikho has masterminded a long list of disposals to focus the group on the nuclear and oil services industries.
Now a proud Footsie constituent, Amec has a £3.4bn order book and £670m in cash on its balance sheet.
Brikho is ambitious and is now being tipped to become the first chief executive with the balls to negotiate the first big UK takeover since the financial crisis began in August 2007.
The resilient Footsie shrugged off growing concerns about increased nuclear tensions in North Korea, impressively retrieving a 70 point deficit to close 46.43 points higher at 4411.72.
Its recovery owed everything to wacky Wall Street which returned triumphantly from a three-day holiday break to claw back an initial 50-point fall and race 196.17 points ahead to 8473.49.
News that US consumer confidence soared in May to its highest-level in eight months caught traders in New York on the hop.
Can maker Rexam advanced 10¼p to 312¾p after Goldman Sachs added the stock to its Conviction buy list. Talk of a pending broker recommendation lifted catering group Compass, which recently reported excellent results, 8¼p higher to 369¼p.
The bullish tenor of chairman Eduardo Hochschild's AGM address attracted buyers to Hochschild Mining, 30p better at 255p. Trading remained strong in the first quarter of 2009. The group has solid assets and an excellent project pipeline.
Engineering software group Aveva jumped 60½p to 639½p on better-than-expected full-year revenues and profits, reflecting growth in the marine, oil and gas and power markets.
Contract news helped Baltic Oil Terminals rise 3p to 18½p. The company, which operates transhipment terminals in Kaliningrad for the export of oil products, has entered into a long-term contract with a major supplier for the export of M-100 fuel oil from Belarus, at up to 35,000 tons per month.
Island Gas Resources, the leading coal bed methane developer in the UK, rose 12p to 58½p. Along with its joint venture partner Nexen Inc, IGR has started generating electricity from domestic coal bed methane gas, a first in the UK. AIM-listed miner African Copper touched 10¾p and closed 1p dearer at 9.38p after announcing it has satisfied all the claims made against it by mining investment firm Natasa Mining and it is now looking to restart mining.
AC has repaid £12.9m to Natasa from the bonds issued by its Messina unit and has paid the investment firm a further £1.3m in settlement for some of Messina's debts.
Polo Resources edged up 0.1p to 3.78p on hearing that the company is requisitioning an EGM at Extract Resources, in which it holds a 9.1% stake, to appoint Stephen Dattels on to its board. Dattels is chairman of Polo and was founder of UraMin, sold in July 2007 for £1.6bn to Areva, the French government-owned uranium company.
Anglo Asian Mining put on 2½p to 18p after the President of Azerbaijan yesterday formally opened the company's Gedabek gold/copper mine in western Azerbaijan - the first operating gold mine in the country.
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