As if there were not enough real bids around today - Barclays' agreed offer for ABN Amro, AstraZeneca's biggest ever deal - traders reported a host of speculation as well.
Brewing group Scottish & Newcastle topped the FTSE 100 leaderboard by the close after a report that drinks groups Diageo and SABMiller had held talks about carving up the company between them. The discussions had apparently continued until the end of last month, but a jump in the S&N share price on bid speculation may have put paid to any deal. According to the Financial Times SAB would have offered 710p a share, then sold on S&N's UK beer businesses to Diageo and its French brewing interests to a private equity buyer.
S&N added 16p to 587.5p although it came off its best levels as traders queried whether such a move would now take place. Diageo was 2p better at £10.41 and SAB edged up 2p to £11.61.
Analysts at Shore Capital said: " The rumours regarding S&N refuse to go away, and to this extent we believe downside in the shares may be limited for the time being. However, we feel at current levels the shares are pushing close to being fully valued, particularly given the low growth forecasts for the group."
Also on the rise was aerospace and defence group Cobham, up 7.25p to 212p on talk of interest from Italy's Finmeccanica. The Italian group has long been tipped as a purchaser of one of the UK's medium-sized aerospace businesses.
In a buy note issued today, Merrill Lynch said Cobham could easily be of interest to Finmeccanica as it would fit well in terms of size, product and regional presence.
Going the other way was pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca, down 121p to £28.32. The company brought forward the announcement of its first quarter results - which showed an 11% profit increase - to unveil the $15bn cash purchase of US biotechnology group MedImmune. The market was not overly impressed.
Analyst Jeremy Batstone at Charles Stanley said, "On balance the acquisition builds Astra's long-term potential but does nothing to address its near-term issues which are well known by the market." These include concerns about its future drugs pipeline, and poor trial results. The broker has downgraded its recommendation from accumulate to hold.
As for Barclays, its shares fell 17p to 733p. It has agreed to buy ABN for €67bn, hoping that will be enough to see off any rival bid, specifically from a consortium including Royal Bank of Scotland. ABN is selling its US bank LaSalle - one of the attractions for RBS - to Bank of America for $21bn. Analysts believe this means RBS - down 11p to £20.17 - has less leeway to step in and spoil the agreed deal. Indeed the RBS consortium cancelled a meeting with ABN planned for today, saying it needed to understand more about the LaSalle deal.
Meanwhile British Airways slipped 1p to 513p as it said it had approached private equity businesses about a possible joint bid for Spain's Iberia.
Overall the market was marginally weaker, with the FTSE 100 down 7.1 points at 6479.7 after indifferent performances from Asian markets overnight and an uninspiring start on Wall Street. However the Dow Jones Industrial Average could still top 13,000 for the first time by the close of US trading today.
Back among the UK corporates, engineering group Bodycote added 8p to 315p after a surprise trading statement indicating that first quarter sales rose 22%. Bodycote has rejected a 332p a share bid approach from Swiss rival Sulzer, with the deadline set for this Friday. Sulzer itself has been tipped as a takeover target, which would leave the Bodycote offer unlikely to proceed.
Analysts at Dresdner Kleinwort said: "The positive trading statement was not expected and provides Bodycote's first line of defence if Sulzer wishes to go ahead and make a formal bid this week. If Sulzer goes away there will be some downside, we think 15p to 20p. The upside, if a bid emerges should be greater, potentially up to 40p."
Television group ITV added 1.5p to 114.6p after last week's City charm offensive by new chairman Michael Grade, but online gaming group 888 fell 4.75p to 117.75p as talks about a takeover by Ladbrokes, up 1.5p to 405p, were discontinued. Morgan Stanley was said to be placing around 6.5m shares in 888 at 111p-113p.
On 888 Numis said: "Although [the ending of takeover talks] is likely to create some near term share price weakness, we believe it will be short lived and would point to next Monday's full year results announcement and first quarter trading update as a near term positive share price catalyst."
Elsewhere support services and construction group Alfred McAlpine lost 10.25p to 493.5p. Full year profits fell from £24.7m to £18.7m, and several senior managers at its slate business have left after an investigation into accounting irregularities revealed what the company called "extensive and systematic fraud" going back a number of years. The North Wales police will now be called in.
Separately the company's finance director has decided to stand down with immediate effect.
Confectionery and drinks group Cadbury Schweppes fell 6.5p to 682p as Birmingham City Council said it was bringing three charges against the company relating to the discovery of salmonella traces in seven of its products in June last year.
Lower down the food chain, cake maker Inter Link fell 3.5p to 107.5p after last week's news that Irish bakery group McCambridge had bought a 3.29% stake.
UK Coal jumped 26.5p to 586.5p after a positive trading report and news that it was continuing to focus on getting value out of its property assets.
But British Energy lost 10p to 518p as it shut its Hartlepool 1 nuclear power plant for planned refuelling.
Mining group Highland Gold was 12p lower at 176p after increased annual losses. Russia's fourth largest gold miner wrote off $79.3m after a fire in September killed 25 people at its Darasun mine in eastern Siberia.
Numis analysts said the write-off marked "the end of the road for the mine with Highland Gold" and cut its target from 130p to 83p.
But SCi Entertainment climbed 16.5p to 438p after a positive note from Citigroup which repeated its target price of 600p. Citigroup said there was likely to be a delay in the release of SCi's Kane & Lynch computer game, but this would not have a significant economic impact. "The release of Kane & Lynch could be moved into fiscal 2008," said Citigroup. "Given the success of PS3 in Europe, we believe SCi is assessing whether to convert K&L into this format, as well as Xbox 360. We expect a decision to be reached in the next week or so.
"Delays raise the spectre of the bad old days of missed Eidos releases [SCi took over Eidos]. However it should be remembered that no firm release date has yet been set for K&L, and it will only be moved into 2008 for commercial, rather than operational reasons."
Finally Zoo Digital, the software business, soared 13p to 31.5p. The company issued a trading update saying it had a strong final quarter of the year and would meet market forecasts, with £2m in cash in the bank.