News

Big gains at Corus and stronger miners failed to cheer London as dealers focused on a weak insurance sector and losses at British Airways and Carnival after oil prices rallied.

Tata of India clinched the deal to buy Anglo-Dutch steel maker Corus for £6.7bn, beating CSN in an auction to create the world's fifth largest steelmaker.

The company emerged victorious with a bid of 608p a share, topping a 603p a share offer from Brazil's CSN. The deal includes £500m of debt.

Life insurer Friends Provident dropped back after Foreign & Colonial Asset Management, in which it has a 51% stake, revealed a fall in funds under management and warned of a dividend cut, lower margins and more losses of mandates in the Netherlands.

The news offset Friends' fourth quarter business update, which revealed total life and pensions new business up 31% to £7.07bn in 2006, while the fourth quarter saw an 18% year-on-year rise to £2.44bn.

Other insurers including Legal & General, Prudential, and Royal & Sun Alliance were also lower.

Satellite broadcaster BSkyB met forecasts with a 10% rise in first-half revenues to £2.2bn though pre-tax profit fell to £356m from £390m after £84m of losses at its start-up broadband venture.

Mobile giant Vodafone added more customers than expected in the third quarter with a net 8.7m new users joining in the period to end-December, taking its total to 198.6m. The group said its customer base had topped 200m by the end of January.

Engineer Smiths's trading is on track with medical and speciality engineering performing "slightly ahead" of expectations.

Dresdner Kleinwort upped shares in fund manager Amvescap to 'buy' from 'hold' while UBS started Smith & Nephew with a "buy" stance ahead of their respective full year figures next month.

JP Morgan upgraded Kingfisher to "overweight" from "neutral" and lifted its price target to 265p but the same broker chopped Pearson to "underweight" from "overweight" as part of a note on the publishing sector.

Swallowfield, the cosmetics manufacturer, has announced that trade in the first half of the year surpassed expectations with the business having more seasonality than in the recent past. It left its forecasts unchanged.

Toymaker and distributor Character expects full year earnings to exceed market expects following a strong performance in the first five months of its financial year.

Kosher food specialist Gold Frost has warned that revenues and profit before tax for the year ended 31 December 2006 will be below market expectations despite fourth quarter revenues of approximately $2.8M, a 40% increase over the fourth quarter of 2005.

Wallpaper supplier Walker Greenbank says full-year profits will exceed market expectations. "The strong performance at the start of the second half continued into our key autumn selling period and on to the year end," the company said.

Secure Design, the biometrics fingerprint authentication firm, said it now expects revenue and operating loss for the year to December to be below market expectations, having previously indicated that it was in line.

Cancer product development firm YM BioSciences halved Wednesday after it terminated Phase III trials of tesmilifene in patients with metastatic or recurrent breast cancer.

FTSE 100 - Risers
Corus Group (CS.) 601.50p +6.84%
Kingfisher (KGF) 239.25p +1.81%
WPP (WPP) 747.00p +1.22%
Amvescap (AVZ) 607.00p +1.00%
Antofagasta (ANTO) 465.00p +0.98%
DSG International (DSGI) 168.75p +0.90%
Yell Group (YELL) 613.50p +0.82%
Severn Trent (SVT) 1,415.00p +0.78%
Vodafone (VOD) 148.00p +0.68%
Kazakhmys (KAZ) 1,047.00p +0.67%

FTSE 100 - Fallers
Friends Provident (FP.) 217.00p -3.98%
British Airways (BAY) 537.75p -2.40%
Reuters Group (RTR) 431.50p -2.27%
Pearson (PSON) 802.00p -1.72%
Barclays (BARC) 740.00p -1.66%
Carnival Corporation (CCL) 2,768.00p -1.63%
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) 1,365.00p -1.59%
Shire (SHP) 1,068.00p -1.48%
Alliance and Leicester (AL.) 1,074.00p -1.47%
Scottish and Newcastle (SCTN) 543.00p -1.45%

FTSE 250 - Risers
PartyGaming (PRTY) 29.50p +7.27%
Hochschild Mining PLC Ord 50p (WI) (HOC) 392.00p +5.31%
PZ Cussons (PZC) 178.50p +3.33%
Misys (MSY) 242.50p +2.75%
Tomkins (TOMK) 272.25p +2.74%
SIG (SHI) 1,163.00p +2.65%
Aquarius Platinum (AQP) 1,329.00p +2.23%
Bodycote (BOY) 273.00p +2.06%
Mitchells & Butlers (MAB) 696.00p +1.90%
SThree (STHR) 380.00p +1.88%

FTSE 250 - Fallers
F&C Asset Management (FCAM) 170.75p -17.81%
Cookson Group (CKSN) 595.00p -3.57%
Dana Petroleum (DNX) 1,020.00p -3.13%
Spirent (SPT) 59.75p -2.85%
Provident Financial (PFG) 729.50p -2.73%
Unite Group (UTG) 500.00p -2.72%
Big Yellow Group (BYG) 625.00p -2.72%
Assura Group (AGR) 211.25p -2.65%
Collins Stewart (CLST) 244.75p -2.49%
Croda (CRDA) 566.00p -2.41%