London’s FTSE 100 was down 1.5% at 7,444.91 in afternoon trade on Friday.
Abrdn was the top riser on the index after it sold just under 40m shares in Phoenix Group in a placing to institutional investors, raising proceeds of around £264m. Following settlement of the placing, which is expected to take place on 1 February, abrdn will hold own a stake of around 10.4% in Phoenix and will continue to appoint a director to the company’s board.
Online supermarket Ocado was under the cosh after a German court considered that its IP rights may be invalid and halted its case against Norwegian robotics company AutoStore.
Munich District Court has suspended Ocado’s proceedings to block the sale of AutoStore’s B1 robot in Germany over intellectual property concerns. The Court noted that Ocado’s utility model IP rights in the action were likely to be invalid.
It considered that, despite Ocado having made significant last-minute amendments to the claims of its utility models, the utility models were likely invalid because the claims were seeking to cover more than had been disclosed in the application for the utility models as originally filed.
Precious metals miner Polymetal lost its shine as Berenberg slashed its price target on the shares to 1,500p from 2,200p following its production report. Berenberg said production was a beat but the company missed on costs.
FTSE 100 – Risers
Abrdn (ABDN) 242.70p 1.89%
Flutter Entertainment (CDI) (FLTR) 10,945.00p 1.67%
Next (NXT) 7,534.00p 1.43%
Barratt Developments (BDEV) 609.60p 1.20%
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 299.10p 1.05%
B&M European Value Retail S.A. (DI) (BME) 565.20p 1.00%
Berkeley Group Holdings (The) (BKG) 4,126.00p 0.98%
BT Group (BT.A) 195.20p 0.85%
Tesco (TSCO) 302.50p 0.83%
Taylor Wimpey (TW.) 146.85p 0.79%
FTSE 100 – Fallers
Ocado Group (OCDO) 1,446.50p -7.28%
Polymetal International (POLY) 1,055.00p -3.61%
Barclays (BARC) 196.44p -3.49%
Associated British Foods (ABF) 1,952.00p -3.27%
Prudential (PRU) 1,224.00p -3.24%
Melrose Industries (MRO) 149.90p -3.23%
Reckitt Benckiser Group (RKT) 6,022.00p -3.21%
Phoenix Group Holdings (PHNX) 664.20p -3.21%
Anglo American (AAL) 3,341.50p -3.17%
Scottish Mortgage Inv Trust (SMT) 1,013.00p -3.11%
