A spate of US takeover news has lit a fire under Wall Street and pulled London shares higher with it.
The burst of activity includes Xerox paying $6.4bn for Affiliated Computer Services, Abbott Laboratories buying the drugs unit of Belgium's Solvay for $6.6bn, and Johnson & Johnson snapping up 18% of Dutch biotech group Crucell.
And inevitably, the excitement has spilled over to the UK in the form of takeover speculation. AstraZeneca, which was higher earlier on a positive appeal court verdict on a patent dispute, is now up 88.5p to £28.40 on talk of a possible bid from Swiss rival Novartis. This is not a new tale, but after Kraft finally made its move on Cadbury, traders were reluctant to dismiss it out of hand.
So with the Dow Jones Industrial Average now up nearly 120 points, the FTSE 100 has climbed 75.58 points to 5157.78
