LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - Shares in life insurers and financials paced gains at the end of the week, with the likes of Old Mutual, Standard Life and Pruential all trading near the top of the leaderboard.


A string of hawkish remarks from various Fed officials had served to push up long-term government bond yields on both sides of the Atlantic, to the benefit of both groups.

RSA Insurance, specifically, also got a boost from an upwards target price revision out of analysts at HSBC.

HSBC analysts Dhruv Gahlaut and Kallesh Mistry upped their target from 630.0p to 695.0p, while maintaining their recommendation to 'Buy' the shares.

RSA's restructuring would be concluded in 2017, with the company moving towards income thereafter. Thus, they now expected the insurer's dividend payout ratio to rise from 40.0% in 2016 to 70% in 2018 (with an increase to 80.0% possible), for a dividend yield of 6.0% versus the sector at 5.9% and the Footsie 100 average of 4.0%.

They also upped their estimate for its 2018 special dividend from 10.0p previously to 15.0p.

Shares in Glencore were also higher after analysts at Citi reiterated their 'Buy' recommendation and 400.0p target, saying the stock price could double.

On the other side of ledger, stock in WPP got thumped after management cautioned on the slow business outlook heading into 2017.

"Given continued tepid economic growth and recent weaker comparative net new business trends, the budgets for 2017, on a like-for-like basis, have been set conservatively at around 2% for both revenue and net sales, but with a headline operating margin target improvement on net sales of 0.3 margin points, in constant currency," WPP said.

Fresnillo was also off a touch as the price of gold softened, with April 2017 gold futures on COMEX down by 0.50% to $1,226.70.

FTSE 100 - Risers

Old Mutual (OML) 225.80p 1.81%
Standard Life (SL.) 378.50p 1.75%
CRH (CRH) 2,885.00p 1.58%
Merlin Entertainments (MERL) 488.10p 1.27%
BHP Billiton (BLT) 1,362.50p 1.23%
Prudential (PRU) 1,648.50p 0.95%
3i Group (III) 702.00p 0.93%
RSA Insurance Group (RSA) 597.50p 0.93%
Legal & General Group (LGEN) 254.10p 0.83%
Barclays (BARC) 231.45p 0.83%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

WPP (WPP) 1,759.00p -7.95%
Fresnillo (FRES) 1,412.00p -2.89%
Hikma Pharmaceuticals (HIK) 2,126.00p -2.70%
Paddy Power Betfair (PPB) 8,720.00p -1.86%
Whitbread (WTB) 3,771.00p -1.82%
Convatec Group (CTEC) 251.10p -1.80%
Sage Group (SGE) 645.50p -1.75%
Persimmon (PSN) 2,080.00p -1.33%
Pearson (PSON) 678.50p -1.31%
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 261.40p -1.25%

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