News that International Power has sold its Czech business for £738m, including debt, has made the company's shares one of the day's biggest movers so far.
The long-awaited sale - to investment firm J&T Group - will give International Power a £380m profit on the deal. Its shares have jumped 11.25p to 249.25p.
With metal prices given a lift by positive manufacturing data from China, miners are also in demand. Vedanta Resources has climbed 86p to £13.74, Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation is up 20.5p to 675p and Xstrata has added 17.1p to 674.4p.
So after yesterday's end of quarter dip, the FTSE 100 has recovered to add 57.94 points to 4307.15.
Marks & Spencer has moved 13p higher to 319p in the wake of better than feared first quarter figures. Singer Capital Markets said:
"UK sales were considerably better than in the preceding periods, with the benefits of internal self help, its 125th anniversary campaign, seasonal weather and the timing of Easter all coming into play against a weak comparative from last year.
"These figures should contribute towards a small upgrade to full year forecasts. Whether or not margin mix advantages in Food are offset by promotional dilution in General Merchandise remains to be seen. Assuming no change to gross margin guidance today, we believe today's sales figures ought to add between £10m-15m to full year pretax profit estimates, an upgrade of around 2-3%."
Rival Next has been helped by the M&S figures, with its shares adding 45p to £15.14.
Elsewhere National Express dropped 25.5p to 284p as it issued a profit warning and the UK government said it would take over the running of the company's loss making East coast franchise.
Hedge fund group Man has dipped 13p to 264.5p, a fall more than accounted for by the company's shares going ex-dividend.
Lloyds Banking Group is 0.13p lower at 69.8p in the wake of noises from the European Union about possible asset sales due to it receiving state aid. A downgrade from Credit Suisse, which has cut its price target from 55p to 50p, has not helped. In contrast to much recent commentary from analysts, Credit Suisse is downbeat on the bank:
"An increasing part of the market is warming to Lloyds. We are not. Some of our concerns are short term, like shrinking deposit revenue that we don't think will be significantly assisted by structural hedges. Indeed, we doubt HBOS, which accounts for 56% of Lloyds deposits, has any significant formal hedge in place. There's also increasing basis risk. We don't have the numbers for Lloyds TSB but HBOS now has over £90bn more funding priced off Libor than assets.
"But many of our concerns are medium term, like the fact that 19% of HBOS corporate loans (excluding overseas and financials) are not paying. As these are written off, income should fall. Deposit competition is also intensifying and combined with a likely mix shift towards fixed rate bonds - Lloyds is paying 190 basis points over swaps on one-year products - we see a marked impact on margin. Similarly, terming out its relatively short funding structure will also likely push income lower - Lloyds latest unsecured term issue cost swaps + 310 basis points.
"In time, better asset yields should partly offset these issues, but we expect weak new business volumes and the mix effect of writing higher quality lending to delay the impact. In the long-term pre-funded deposit protection schemes, more onerous capital requirements - particularly as risk weighted assets re-inflate - and the potential impact of any EC ruling also concern us. With the outlook so unclear, we don't much like the concept of "normalised EPS", but we think 8p post 2012 is reasonable. This is 6p in present value terms and given the risks, that leaves Lloyds looking expensive, in our view."
