Bid activity helped the market to a five week high, particularly in the insurance sector. Resolution said it was returning to the negotiating table after Friends Provident rejected last week’s offer. It said it would supplement its £1.7bn all-share offer with a cash sweetener. Shares in Friends Provident rose 2.4% to 73.2p.
Resolution also said that it had its eyes on bigger fish than Friends as part of its long-term acquisition strategy. This pushed up the wider insurance sector, with Old Mutual gaining 3.25% to 88.9p, Prudential gaining 5.5% to 409.6p and Legal & General rising 7.6% to 61.4p.
Markets were also given a boost by a report from Goldman Sachs saying the S&P 500 would enjoy its best second-half rally since 1982.
After a strong week last week, the miners and industrial metals were at the top of today’s performance tables once again. Kazakhmys was the day’s second best performer, rising 7.6% to 737.5p. BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto also saw decent gains.
Lloyds also performed well as investors became increasingly optimistic that it may return to profitability in the first half and strengthen its balance sheet.It was up 6.7% to 72p. However, Credit Suisse kept its underperform rating for the shares.
Domino's Pizza put in a strong performance as it continued to defy the economic growth to deliver strong sales growth for the first half of the year. Although there had been some slowing in the rate of growth, the group is proving remarkably resilient to the downturn and said it would beat market expectations for the full year. Shares rose 17.2% to 235.25p.
Among the weaker stocks was Smith & Nephew, hit by Cazenove cutting its rating from outperform to in-line on the back of swine flu. British Airways also had a weak day’s trading as investors took profits after the shares saw a tick up on the back of the £600m liquidity boost announced on Friday.