FTSE broadly steady despite resource stocks moving south

Despite some positive news and fresh bid talks the FTSE 100 index finished the day level as mining and energy stocks dragged Britain's index of top stocks down. By end of trading in London the FTSE 100 index closed up by 4.63 points or 0.09 per cent, finishing at 5,371 points.

Chris Bradshaw
shareprices.com - Thursday, September 02, 2010

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Mining stocks dragged matters south as Tullow Oil and Cairn Energy dropped by 4.13 per cent and 3.49 per cent respectively. Fresnillo, Lonmin, Centrica, Antofagasta and Eurasian Natural Resources all moved down by 1.97 per cent to 0.62 per cent. Vendanta Resources moved up by 2.08, bucking the trend.

Autonomy Corporation gained substantially as investors cheered talks of a buy-out by a US software company. Autonomy has had previous interest from Microsoft and Oracle both of whom have found the company's ability to make sense of unstructured data attractive. This has prompted some investors to think that there might be strong competition if an acquisition offer becomes reality. Autonomy Corporation moved up by 5.21 per cent to 229p.

Defence contractor BAE Systems also gained support as it announced a $629m contract to upgrade a large number of mine-resistant vehicles currently operated by the US government. The stock moved up to 313.3p, a gain of 3.74 per cent.

Other stocks that gained substantially includ Man Group up 5.77 per cent, Whitbread up 3.74 per cent and Carnival up 3.01 per cent. International Power, TUI Travel moved up by 2.51 per cent and 2.22 per cent respectively.

 

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