Market Round Up: Fenner soars to a new high after mining takeover talk hots up

The engineer, which makes conveyor belts which are rather more heavyweight than the ones you find in your local supermarket, has seen its share price shoot up by two thirds in less than five months, and today bid talk helped it to set a new high.

The group rose 13.8p to 480.65p after Panmure Gordon said that, after a wave of consolidation among the mining equipment manufacturers, the belt-makers could be next.

Claiming the sector was "beginning to look more appetising in the value chain", the broker's analyst Oliver Wynne-James said he believed Fenner was starting "to look appealing to the larger players".

To support his theory, he pointed to the ongoing scrap between Weir Group and FLSmith for Australia's Ludowici, saying it "shows that the heat is beginning to be turned up".

Weir - which ticked up 20p to 2174.5p - today revealed it had increased its offer for the mining equipment maker, which Wynne-James claimed had a "parallel expertise" to Fenner.

It was a smashing session for the mid-tier engineers generally, with Bodycote the stand-out performer.

It shot up 48.3p - or 14.33% - to 385.6p after the heat-treating firm revealed its full-year headline operating profits had jumped 64%.

And Cookson advanced 33.5p to 673.5p on the news that it had struck a deal with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway to get rid of its American precious metals operations for an undisclosed sum.

Overall, the FTSE 100 managed to rally after two days on the slide, rising 12.30 points to 5928.85.

The banks were playing their part as Royal Bank of Scotland advanced 0.94p to 28.27p, despite initially dipping after the release of its final results.

The top spot, however, was claimed by Capita. The outsourcer enjoyed a strong rise yesterday when news of a contract win with the Civil Service prompted a short squeeze, and today it pushed up another 34p to 722.25p after announcing full-year profits had risen 6%.

Security giant G4S firmed up 3.3p to 282.95p as it unveiled a £17 million deal to snap up mobile patrol business Chubb Emergency Response.

Having seen a late spurt yesterday after speculation it could be a target for Germany's Bayer was revived yet again, Shire was unable to keep moving high with the drugsmaker, instead slipping 8p to 2,239.5p.

Down on the FTSE 250, Kier was left with the wooden spoon, retreating 99p to 1391.5p as the construction firm spooked the market with its warning that challenging conditions will persist for the next year-and-a-half.

Punters were piling out of Tower Resources after the explorer admitted drilling of its Mvule-1 exploration well in Uganda had been unsuccessful and it was plugging and abandoning the site. In response the AIM-listed tiddler plummeted 0.82p to 2.65p - a fall of more than 20% - although Northland Capital said previous dry wells meant the latest was "not a massive surprise".

Elsewhere, Gulf Keystone Petroleum continued to bounce around. After its recent meteoric rise, helped by persistent speculation it could become a takeover target, the Kurdistan-focused group has been hit by profit-taking over the past few days.

That heavy-selling continued in early trading today, with it falling as low as 336p but clearly investors decided there was a bargain to be had as Gulf Keystone reversed its losses and advanced 22p to 386.38p.