LONDON (ShareCast) - Restaurant Group was lifted by an upgrade in its rating from Westhouse Securities, which now recommends buying the stock.

African Barrick Gold and Centamin were rising strongly after gold prices hit a two-month high yesterday.

Engineering group James Fisher was higher on the news it has bought monitoring, instrumentation and testing services provider Testconsult for £8m in cash. The group is doing the deal to extend services provided by its Strainstall Monitoring business, which uses strain gauges and sensors to structurally monitor and dynamically load-test bridges, other structures and offshore installations.

Debenhams was swinging between gains and losses as investors digested the company's third-quarter update. Like-for-like sales fell, but reflected the impact of a later-than-usual summer sale season as expected. However, the company proposed a refinancing which results in a higher interest charge.

Meanwhile, Renishaw, Northgate and Foxtons declined after strong gains in yesterday's session, while Soco International fell on reports it has been forced to deny allegations that a Congolese government delegation was paid to attend a meeting by the United Nations that was being held to discuss whether or not exploratory work on the oldest national park in Africa should be permitted.

A report was said to be leaked by the Congolese environment ministry alleging that the oil group had paid for the delegation to attend the meeting in Doha this month.

According to an article published in the Guardian on Thursday, “it was definitely not paid for by Soco in any way. A request [for Soco to pay for the delegation] was made by the ICCN [the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature, the government national parks authority] in May but was politely turned down".



FTSE 250 - Risers
Rank Group (RNK) 168.30p +5.85%
Barr (A.G.) (BAG) 625.00p +4.43%
Restaurant Group (RTN) 578.50p +3.95%
BTG (BTG) 637.00p +3.92%
Petra Diamonds Ltd.(DI) (PDL) 190.00p +3.83%
Ted Baker (TED) 1,759.00p +3.47%
Brown (N.) Group (BWNG) 437.40p +3.38%
Imagination Technologies Group (IMG) 235.40p +3.25%
African Barrick Gold (ABG) 211.20p +3.23%
Centamin (DI) (CEY) 64.70p +3.19%

FTSE 250 - Fallers
Renishaw (RSW) 1,646.00p -4.58%
Foxtons Group (FOXT) 283.70p -4.32%
Northgate (NTG) 505.50p -2.60%
Hellermanntyton Group (HTY) 300.20p -2.25%
Intermediate Capital Group (ICP) 391.30p -2.13%
Electrocomponents (ECM) 273.00p -1.97%
888 Holdings (888) 114.00p -1.81%
Partnership Assurance Group (PA.) 124.40p -1.43%
Soco International (SIA) 416.90p -1.28%
BH Global Ltd. USD Shares (BHGU) 11.7 -1.27%

NR

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