Friends Provident was in demand in early trading after finally offloading its asset management arm, F&C Asset Management.
Shares in Friends led the FTSE 100, up 2.8% at 63.2p, after it announced it was handing its 52% stake in F&C to its shareholders. Under the deal, investors will receive one 1 F&C Share for every 10 Friends Provident Group Shares held at 6.00pm last night. The stake is worth £170m.
The impending deal helped to keep Friends out of the general share selloff yesterday. And analysts are pleased that the F&C is finally off Friends' hands, after it failed to find a buyer for the business.
Friends can now focus on its core business while, according to one report, F&C might go on the acquisition trail itself.
Across in the losers aisle, Balfour Beatty have dropped 2.35% to 301p, down 7.25p, despite reporting this morning that recent trading is in line with expectations.
"Our strong market positions, the resilience of our business model and our high-quality order book mean that we anticipate making progress in 2009," said the company.
There's little other early action in the City today. Perhaps the unpleasantly muggy conditions are dampening traders' enthusiasm as well as their shirts (good luck to anyone travelling on the underground later).
There's also little chance of things picking up later in the day, as the US markets are closed ahead of the 4 July celebrations.
"With the US off for a long weekend, this might be a very quiet trading session," warned David Evans, market analyst at BetOnMarkets.com.
The FTSE 100 is up just 0.36 of a point at 4234.63, or a mighty 0.01%.
