LONDON (ShareCast) - Shares in pharmaceutical giant Shire tanked after the US Food and Drug Administration approved a rival’s application to make a generic version of its attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drug, Adderall XR.

IAG was also out of favour on reports that nationalised Spanish bank Bankia and its holding company are preparing to sell most of their corporate shareholdings, including the 12% stake in the airline. IAG said last week that it was open to a rival airline buying the stake owned by Bankia.

Financial stocks were registering losses as investors fled from risk. Banking groups Lloyds, RBS, Standard Chartered and Barclays were out of favour, joined by insurance group Aviva and Aberdeen Asset Management. Also heading lower were many of the mining stocks.

By the same token utilities proved popular, with National Grid, Severn Trent and United Utilities all making it into the top ten.

Precious metals miner Polymetal was gaining after Nomura upgraded the stock by two notches from 'reduce' to 'buy', saying that "now that Polymetal has passed the FTSE re-weighting, we believe that these [current] levels provide a decent entry point."


FTSE 100 - Risers
Hargreaves Lansdown (HL.) 508.50p +1.50%
Polymetal International (POLY) 923.00p +1.04%
Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 849.00p +0.77%
Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 1,378.00p +0.51%
National Grid (NG.) 661.00p +0.38%
Severn Trent (SVT) 1,612.00p +0.37%
United Utilities Group (UU.) 647.50p +0.23%
Centrica (CNA) 307.80p +0.23%
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 294.10p +0.17%
Tate & Lyle (TATE) 637.50p +0.16%

FTSE 100 - Fallers
Shire Plc (SHP) 1,717.00p -12.67%
Evraz (EVR) 256.20p -4.47%
Aviva (AV.) 266.30p -3.02%
Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. (ENRC) 403.00p -2.73%
Rio Tinto (RIO) 2,909.00p -2.45%
Kazakhmys (KAZ) 685.50p -2.35%
Anglo American (AAL) 2,020.00p -2.20%
Xstrata (XTA) 798.90p -2.16%
ITV (ITV) 73.55p -2.13%
IMI (IMI) 830.50p -2.12%

NR

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