Arriva Moves to Head of Queue

Profit-taking late in the day trimmed a few points of the FTSE 100 index on Wednesday afternoon, but the blue-chip index still managed to close at its highest level for 21 months, up 24.2 points at 5,644.6.

Dominic Turner
shareprices.com - Wednesday, March 17, 2010

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Arriva

The U.S. Federal Reserve honoured its pledge to maintain interest rates and made some encouraging noises about the U.S. economy in general, lifting Wall Street. London equities followed suit, with mining stocks leading the way after a series of broker updates. Rio Tinto, up 65p or 1.76% to 3,767p and BHP Billiton, up 34.5p or 1.58% at 2,220p, shrugged off a downgrade to "hold" from "buy" by Société Générale and Antofagasta similarly confounded the French bank's view, rising 9p or 0.88% to 1,030p after being downgraded to "sell" from "hold".

Bus and train operator Arriva carried all before it, rising 97.5p or 16.82% to 677p after it confirmed that it had received its second takeover approach in the last two months. Talks between Arriva and the French railway group SNCF came to an end earlier this month, but speculation was rife that the new bidder was German transport operator Deutsche Bahn, who may have tabled a 700p-a-share bid.

At the other end of the market, security group G4S continued in the wrong direction, losing a further 13.3p or 4.94% to 255.90p after rumours that Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) had already placed 141 million shares at 25p-a-share, representing roughly 10% of the issued share capital.

 

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