LONDON (ShareCast) - Severn Trent surged this afternoon after the LongRiver consortium upped its cash offer for the water provider following the rejection of an earlier proposal by the group earlier this week.

The consortium has offered 2,200p per Severn Trent share, including the 45.51p dividend announced in May, which values the group at £5.3bn at a fully diluted basis. Monday’s rebuffed offer was for 2,125p per share.

Cyclical stocks such as financials and miners were performing well after the US jobs report eased fears that the Federal Reserve would prematurely scale back its quantitative easing programme, something that has been behind the market’s impressive performance since the start of the year. Prudential, RBS and Standard Life were on the rise, closely followed by Rio Tinto, Antofagasta and Glencore Xstrata.

Asset management group Aberdeen was a heavy faller today after Bank of America Merrill Lynch downgraded its rating for the stock to 'underperform', saying that its organic inflows could slow significantly from consensus expectations. "With the stock up around 20% year-to-date, the valuation premium to peers looks unwarranted," the broker said.

Chemicals group Johnson Matthey was also in the red, pulling back after a strong rise yesterday. Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Goldman have all raised their target prices for the stock this morning following Thursday's well-received full-year results.


FTSE 100 - Risers
Prudential (PRU) 1,107.00p +4.43%
BT Group (BT.A) 313.00p +3.75%
Severn Trent (SVT) 2,092.00p +3.56%
Kingfisher (KGF) 347.80p +3.27%
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 326.70p +3.09%
Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) 455.10p +2.94%
Standard Life (SL.) 373.80p +2.81%
Hammerson (HMSO) 505.00p +2.66%
TUI Travel (TT.) 343.90p +2.66%
CRH (CRH) 1,359.00p +2.64%

FTSE 100 - Fallers
Aberdeen Asset Management (ADN) 408.00p -3.50%
Hargreaves Lansdown (HL.) 911.50p -1.19%
Meggitt (MGGT) 518.50p -1.14%
Johnson Matthey (JMAT) 2,720.00p -1.09%
Sage Group (SGE) 348.60p -0.85%
ARM Holdings (ARM) 871.00p -0.85%
Serco Group (SRP) 591.00p -0.67%
Wood Group (John) (WG.) 809.50p -0.61%
Pearson (PSON) 1,171.00p -0.51%
Tullow Oil (TLW) 1,002.00p -0.40%

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